22/05/2014 Meet the Author


22/05/2014

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Zia Haider Rahman was born in Bangladesh and came to England as a

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child, he went to Oxford to study maths and studied at Cambridge,

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Munich and Yale, worked on Wall Street and switched course to become

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a human rights lawyer. Now he has changed again and written a novel.

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It is about Zafar, whose background and career sound like those of his

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creator. It is an astonishing first novel, a firecracker full of ideas

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about mathematics, class, choice, exile, part of its set in Kabul

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after the US invasion. It contains one of the clearest descriptions I

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have read about what caused the financial crash. And it is about how

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difficult it is to know anything about ourselves or anybody else with

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any degree of certainty. Zia Haider Rahman, this is a clever

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book with a lot of ideas, let's start with a simple sounding

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question. How far is Zafar you? There are certainly similarities.

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Biographical between me and Zafar. We were both born in Bangladesh, we

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grew up in property, we moved to the UK when we were small and we lived

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in projects, we went to Oxford. And we went on to Wall Street and became

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human rights lawyers. But that is the extent of biographical

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similarity. I draw on my own experiences and we write what we

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know. And you know a lot, quite clearly. There is a lot of knowledge

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referenced in this book and one of the things that makes it so

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entertaining and stimulating. You got a good review in the New Yorker

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which talked about what it called the intellectual potency of the

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book, it is a term from biology meaning the potential of the cell to

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develop into one `` more than one type of cell depending on

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environment, is that an appropriate description? It is interesting you

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say that. It is interesting to find that definition. I am immediately

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thinking about its metaphoric value. It is appropriate in many different

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ways. Not least of all that it suggests how we come to be what we

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are very much because of our environment. There is genetics but

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what is interesting is how people differ, one of the things that is

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interesting is how people differ because of the conditional

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environment. In a certain respect, environment. In a certain respect,

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that is explored in this novel. Two people of different class

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backgrounds who have a lot in common. A self Asian who read maths

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at Oxford and went into banking, but their class backgrounds such and

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their ringing are such that they have very different experiences of

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the world Ash South Asian. And ways of viewing the world. Grittily and

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due both originate in Bangladesh `` three and you. It was born out of a

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vicious war, how important is that in the framework of the book and to

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people like you and Zafar who originated out of this? This is one

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of the great mysteries of history. Events of that magnitude, what is

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their lasting effect? Not just on a country, at on individuals and on

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the psyche of people one step removed ``. On individuals. I do not

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want to give anything away but Zafar is fundamentally affected. He is

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affected by that war, there is an event which conditions his life. It

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is one of the things I explore. At the same time, it remains a mystery

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and I think that is the nature of the experience we all have of the

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impact of major events that are just a little beyond our horizon. That is

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something that comes up a lot in this book, the understanding of

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things we aren't our horizon. The title In the Light of What We Know

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comes from a phrase of Zafar's, talks `` talking about the

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possibility of understanding new ideas because we only see them in

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the light `` In The Light Of What We Know C. Godel's theory relates to

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that. He was Godel and what is his dear? `` who was. It is

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extraordinary because it can be stated in plain language. `` what

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was his eerie. I know some mathematicians will agree. Simply

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stated, it says there are things that are true that cannot be proven

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to be true. And Zafar finds this terribly upsetting because for him,

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mathematics was a realm of certitude. This is a man who is

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rootless and struggling. Struggling to find a place in the world. He

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thought he had found it in mathematics. But the novel

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constantly explores this question of, what is it that we can rely on,

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what is it, what do we know what do we think we know? Can we trust our

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senses and what we are hearing? For Zafar, the tragic conclusion he

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drives towards is that knowledge only gets you so far. You have

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switched careers more than once. Wall Street banker to human rights

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lawyer to novelist, why become a writer? I am not sure I did it quite

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so calculated. For various reasons, I from myself at a point in life

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where I just wanted to step off the treadmill `` I found myself. I gave

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myself three years to travel across Europe and Asia and my journey was

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cut short. Deaths of people I cared about. And I found myself with

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time, and an idea that has come into my head during the journey now came

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back and I sat down to write it `` that had come.

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Thank you very much. Hello, lightning strikes, torrential

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rain and small tornadoes reported. Thunderstorms have been working

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North across England and Wales today and heavy showers through this

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evening. They are gradually moving North. Pushing away from northern

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England. Further showers behind that into central and Southern

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