:00:00. > :00:12.Zia Haider Rahman was born in Bangladesh and came to England as a
:00:13. > :00:17.child, he went to Oxford to study maths and studied at Cambridge,
:00:18. > :00:22.Munich and Yale, worked on Wall Street and switched course to become
:00:23. > :00:27.a human rights lawyer. Now he has changed again and written a novel.
:00:28. > :00:31.It is about Zafar, whose background and career sound like those of his
:00:32. > :00:38.creator. It is an astonishing first novel, a firecracker full of ideas
:00:39. > :00:42.about mathematics, class, choice, exile, part of its set in Kabul
:00:43. > :00:46.after the US invasion. It contains one of the clearest descriptions I
:00:47. > :00:51.have read about what caused the financial crash. And it is about how
:00:52. > :00:53.difficult it is to know anything about ourselves or anybody else with
:00:54. > :01:15.any degree of certainty. Zia Haider Rahman, this is a clever
:01:16. > :01:23.book with a lot of ideas, let's start with a simple sounding
:01:24. > :01:30.question. How far is Zafar you? There are certainly similarities.
:01:31. > :01:36.Biographical between me and Zafar. We were both born in Bangladesh, we
:01:37. > :01:39.grew up in property, we moved to the UK when we were small and we lived
:01:40. > :01:47.in projects, we went to Oxford. And we went on to Wall Street and became
:01:48. > :01:57.human rights lawyers. But that is the extent of biographical
:01:58. > :02:00.similarity. I draw on my own experiences and we write what we
:02:01. > :02:05.know. And you know a lot, quite clearly. There is a lot of knowledge
:02:06. > :02:09.referenced in this book and one of the things that makes it so
:02:10. > :02:14.entertaining and stimulating. You got a good review in the New Yorker
:02:15. > :02:19.which talked about what it called the intellectual potency of the
:02:20. > :02:24.book, it is a term from biology meaning the potential of the cell to
:02:25. > :02:27.develop into one `` more than one type of cell depending on
:02:28. > :02:38.environment, is that an appropriate description? It is interesting you
:02:39. > :02:43.say that. It is interesting to find that definition. I am immediately
:02:44. > :02:53.thinking about its metaphoric value. It is appropriate in many different
:02:54. > :02:56.ways. Not least of all that it suggests how we come to be what we
:02:57. > :03:02.are very much because of our environment. There is genetics but
:03:03. > :03:09.what is interesting is how people differ, one of the things that is
:03:10. > :03:13.interesting is how people differ because of the conditional
:03:14. > :03:17.environment. In a certain respect, environment. In a certain respect,
:03:18. > :03:21.that is explored in this novel. Two people of different class
:03:22. > :03:28.backgrounds who have a lot in common. A self Asian who read maths
:03:29. > :03:34.at Oxford and went into banking, but their class backgrounds such and
:03:35. > :03:38.their ringing are such that they have very different experiences of
:03:39. > :03:45.the world Ash South Asian. And ways of viewing the world. Grittily and
:03:46. > :03:50.due both originate in Bangladesh `` three and you. It was born out of a
:03:51. > :03:55.vicious war, how important is that in the framework of the book and to
:03:56. > :04:08.people like you and Zafar who originated out of this? This is one
:04:09. > :04:12.of the great mysteries of history. Events of that magnitude, what is
:04:13. > :04:18.their lasting effect? Not just on a country, at on individuals and on
:04:19. > :04:24.the psyche of people one step removed ``. On individuals. I do not
:04:25. > :04:30.want to give anything away but Zafar is fundamentally affected. He is
:04:31. > :04:42.affected by that war, there is an event which conditions his life. It
:04:43. > :04:47.is one of the things I explore. At the same time, it remains a mystery
:04:48. > :04:53.and I think that is the nature of the experience we all have of the
:04:54. > :04:59.impact of major events that are just a little beyond our horizon. That is
:05:00. > :05:03.something that comes up a lot in this book, the understanding of
:05:04. > :05:11.things we aren't our horizon. The title In the Light of What We Know
:05:12. > :05:14.comes from a phrase of Zafar's, talks `` talking about the
:05:15. > :05:19.possibility of understanding new ideas because we only see them in
:05:20. > :05:27.the light `` In The Light Of What We Know C. Godel's theory relates to
:05:28. > :05:34.that. He was Godel and what is his dear? `` who was. It is
:05:35. > :05:43.extraordinary because it can be stated in plain language. `` what
:05:44. > :05:45.was his eerie. I know some mathematicians will agree. Simply
:05:46. > :05:53.stated, it says there are things that are true that cannot be proven
:05:54. > :05:58.to be true. And Zafar finds this terribly upsetting because for him,
:05:59. > :06:06.mathematics was a realm of certitude. This is a man who is
:06:07. > :06:10.rootless and struggling. Struggling to find a place in the world. He
:06:11. > :06:14.thought he had found it in mathematics. But the novel
:06:15. > :06:24.constantly explores this question of, what is it that we can rely on,
:06:25. > :06:30.what is it, what do we know what do we think we know? Can we trust our
:06:31. > :06:38.senses and what we are hearing? For Zafar, the tragic conclusion he
:06:39. > :06:45.drives towards is that knowledge only gets you so far. You have
:06:46. > :06:48.switched careers more than once. Wall Street banker to human rights
:06:49. > :07:00.lawyer to novelist, why become a writer? I am not sure I did it quite
:07:01. > :07:10.so calculated. For various reasons, I from myself at a point in life
:07:11. > :07:14.where I just wanted to step off the treadmill `` I found myself. I gave
:07:15. > :07:21.myself three years to travel across Europe and Asia and my journey was
:07:22. > :07:30.cut short. Deaths of people I cared about. And I found myself with
:07:31. > :07:35.time, and an idea that has come into my head during the journey now came
:07:36. > :07:37.back and I sat down to write it `` that had come.
:07:38. > :07:53.Thank you very much. Hello, lightning strikes, torrential
:07:54. > :07:55.rain and small tornadoes reported. Thunderstorms have been working
:07:56. > :08:01.North across England and Wales today and heavy showers through this
:08:02. > :08:06.evening. They are gradually moving North. Pushing away from northern
:08:07. > :08:07.England. Further showers behind that into central and Southern