Rumaan Alam on Entitlement

“It’s a book about reality, about the fact that you don’t ever know what’s going to happen to you, and literally nothing you do can protect you. And that’s such a crazy thing to say, but it’s true. And we all know it. You have to accept it. If you don’t accept it, that’s mental disease, that’s paranoia. You have to live, but you have to make your peace with the profound uncertainty of what it is to live.”

Rumaan Alam is the author of three novels: Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and Leave the World Behind. Other writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the New Republic. He studied writing at Oberlin College and now lives in New York with his family.