“To be five years old is to be surprised by life. I'm amused by my children's awe at quotidian things - a toy helicopter, a bubble bath, the visible tentacles on a plate of calamari. And I'm envious of their ability to attain something I often can't: a state of transcendence induced by art.”

American writer

Rumaan Alam is an American writer, best known for his novel Leave the World Behind. He writes fiction with a contemporary, observant edge, and his work has reached a wide readership through Leave the World Behind, which became his best-known book. Beyond that title, he is known for writing about present-day life and the pressures that shape it.