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