The Radiance

by Ayad Akhtar

A mysterious accident along a country road sparks an awakening and an investigation in Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and acclaimed novelist Ayad Akhtar’s most daring work yet—a visionary novel of spiritual transformation in an age of fracture.

When a hit-and-run shatters more than his body, a writer is caught between revelation and madness as an uncanny pull toward a brilliant campus colleague ensnares him in a scandal that threatens to destroy them both. What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator’s accident—both the violence and its aftermath.

Moving between rural America and Europe, Islam and Christianity, the intimate and the metaphysical, The Radiance is of our American moment and beyond it—asking not only what has broken, but what radiance remains.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Mystery, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, College, Novels

304 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication September 29, 2026

About the author

Ayad Akhtar is a playwright, novelist, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director. Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN/America and New York Theatre Workshop.

Reviews

[Matt Quann]

Thanks to Cam via Simon & Schuster for this advanced reader copy of Ayad Akhtar's new novel dropping in fall of 2026.

After reading, and loving, Akhtar's 2020 novel Homeland Elegies I was utterly delighted to find a copy of The Radiance in the mail. I think it's worth mentioning at the top that this novel does reference his last in a fashion that is additive having read both books. If you're considering this novel later in the year, I'd say you'd be smart to give Homeland Elegies a read first.

Like Homeland Elegies, The Radiance brings the reader the autofictional life of Ayad Akhtar. What's real and what's fiction is blurry at best and the novel's strongest passages feel like reading someone's diary. In the novel's opening pages Akhtar is struck in a hit and run while out for a bike ride that leaves him without a spleen. During the acute care of his injury and his subsequent convalescence, Akhtar is unmoored from his worry-ridden frame and left with a constellation of strange neurological symptoms. Akhtar's journey through his expanding empathy, absent anxiety, and search for understanding of his experience forms the spine of The Radiance.

From there, the novel moves in a number of different directions. There's a subplot that seeks to understand the hit and run and uncover the perpetrator while a second recurring topic is a family trauma Akhtar becomes aware of after a dinner with his cousin. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a professor at an upscale university with whom Akhtar becomes intellectually and, potentially, romantically entangled. This professor convinces our narrator to teach a creative writing course at the university where his students then become involved in the larger narrative.

It's to Akhtar's credit that this giant, messy story feels so vital and true to life and not a hodgepodge of topics. There's an oneiric quality to the writing, themes, and conflicts that occur over a compact 300 pages. Even if the connection feels at first tenuous, Akhtar leaves subtle and overt ties between the subjects here creating a web of experience rather than a simple point A to point B plot. I know this is not going to be for everyone, but it worked exceedingly well for me.

This is in no small part due to Akhtar's splendid--dare I say radiant--writing. There's a flow here that many writers aspire to but few achieve. Shifting between the insular and incredibly personal to huge cultural and societal changes at institutions of higher learning shouldn't be as smooth as Akhtar makes it here. Akhtar's internal experience could have read like an extended micro-dose mushroom trip, but instead feels expansive and strives towards a larger understanding of human experience.

Like a stew's component parts before being cooked, The Radiance looks like it shouldn't all go together, but once you've had a proper taste, it's richness and complexity unveils itself. I loved reading this book and came away, as I did with Homeland Elegies, feeling smarter and in awe of what can still surprise in literature. This is really great stuff.

[4.5 Stars]

[Mai H.]

ANHPI TBR

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and S&S/Summit Books

[Emily Varga]

Mark my words this book will win awards

[Jill]

This is a case of "it's the reader, not the writer." Ayad Akhtar is a cerebral and masterful writer but I just couldn't connect.

[Seawitch]

As someone who works in higher ed and also psychiatry, there was a lot to ponder in this story set in a university town on the Hudson in NYS in the present timeframe and featuring a Pakistani-American adjunct professor who is injured in a hit and run that is racially motivated.

After the accident, the narrator has some “interesting” neurological changes as a result of his injuries. While adjunct teaching a seminar in autofiction to a group of precocious and uber-PC undergrads he gets a bit in over his head.

There’s more… he has a romantic interest in a white humanities professor who is married to a Black surgeon. She’s a bit of a wild card with a “past.” He’s also got a pretty complicated cultural and generational history.

Things happen that are not surprising but certainly are complicated. Is this book also autofiction? I’m guessing yes, this is meant to be an exemplar of the genre.

In light of the political intrusions on higher ed institutions and the attacks on academic freedom in the last few years, some of what happens here will be unsettling, but not very surprising.

In the era of the helicopter-parented generation reaching college age, the main characters seem a bit naive about the potential for what happens in the classroom to have direct professional repercussions that are not pleasant.

There are a lot of literary and other erudite references and discussions in the book that were over my non-humanities head, but I still found this book quite interesting and certainly it captures the zeitgeist.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Charlotte Caine]

This maybe wasn’t a good book for me to read but it was a good book. Thankful for the advanced reader copy — I think this will get pretty big. My favorite part was how sensation/physical being was central to the plot and character. Obviously, that’s what the novel explores, but I think it’s a rarity to encounter such plausible and vivid *feeling* as a driving action. I thought the auto-fiction of it all was especially interesting, particularly the structural mirroring when Ayad questioned who the protagonist should be in Susan’s story. Londyn was also so interesting. Wanted more on her.

Just a little too close to the bone for me, which made it harder to view the novel at arms length.

[Robyn]

⭐️⭐️

Amazingly bizarre—that’s probably the best way I can describe The Radiance. I’m giving it 2 stars mainly because it was bizarre enough to keep me reading. I kept waiting for some sense of closure or resolution for the character/author, but it never really came.

The writing was incredibly descriptive, but I struggled with the characters development and overall flow. There were also several references to political discourse throughout the book, which immediately lowered my enjoyment. Regardless of political leanings, I read fiction for escapism from current political issues, so I found the repeated references distracting.

Ultimately, this was a very unusual reading experience. I’m glad I stuck with it, but I’m not sure I ever fully understood what I was supposed to take away from it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this advance eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[2raccoonsinacoat]

“The Radiance” is an incredibly layered, smart, beautiful book. I almost had to consciously change the way my brain wanted to read it, and I feel a little smarter for having done so. I will be shocked if this doesn’t get some accolades, if not significant ones.

To start, this is an unusual novel. It’s autofiction, which I hadn’t even heard of until reading it, so Akhtar is both our narrator and protagonist. There are two main storylines: one following his transcendental experience after an accident, and the other following his professorship amid a college scandal involving his close friend, Lucie, whom he reveres. The storylines feel distinct, but they’re woven together masterfully. I was completely immersed in both and never found myself wishing we’d get back to the other, which can happen with parallel plots.

There are a LOT of themes here, many of which I’m sure went over my head. Eventually I just kind of…accepted that and let myself absorb what I could without getting too tangled up trying to parse every message. I hope to reread this someday because I’m sure more will come through when I do.

Writing-wise…my god. Stunning, visceral, and challenging. I had to look up definitions a LOT, but the word choice felt so precise and intentional that it was worth slowing down for. Despite how advanced the prose is, it never felt pretentious. This is a deeply philosophical book dealing with existence, love, sex, faith, identity, and morality, but I never felt preached to. That’s impressive.

Some of what Akhtar explores critically is sensitive, and I have a feeling this book is going to rub some people the wrong way. There are criticisms of cancel culture, woke culture, sexual autonomy, and campus politics, among other things. I’d just say that if you find yourself tensing up or getting defensive while reading this (like I did), STICK IT OUT. It’s intentional. Let yourself feel the feelings, keep an open mind, and see where it takes you.

Anyway, that’s more than I needed to say, but I had to get my computer out for this review, which I don’t normally do. This was great. I can’t wait to hear what people have to say about it when it publishes.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Susan]

This fascinating novel is difficult to describe. The narrator, Ayad, is a writer living in upstate New York. He is hit by a truck while cycling on a country road. As he recovers, he notices that he feels emotions differently and perceives others’ emotions strongly. There is also a storyline involving Ayad’s friend Lucie, who becomes embroiled in a campus scandal. And there are startling revelations about Ayad’s father.

This book was mesmerizing. Sometimes I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening or how the storylines fit together, but I could not put this one down. I think this novel has a lot to say about our current moment: violence, political divides, generational divides, campus politics, political correctness, cancel culture, compassion, and empathy. It’s a kind of kaleidoscope through which you can see shifting realities and take from it what resonates most strongly. I can see myself rereading this one at some point.

Thank you to NetGalley and Summit Books for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.

[Tyler Atwood]

What better setting for fraught questions of cultural warfare and identity politics than the college campus, ground zero for so many increasingly self-important, verging-on-hollow battles over moral authority?

I won’t pretend to have understood all of the dense metaphysics. Akhtar’s writing is beautiful, though at times so elaborate that it starts to feel impersonal. What really interested me was the tension between the protagonist’s spiritual transformation after his accident and the novel’s rich, emotionally exhausting, audacious critique of today’s harmful moral posturing.

Provocative, suspenseful, intellectually rigorous.

[Linda Rozanski]

This is one of those books where you get to the end and think – what just happened? Although the cover is clearly marked “novel”, it felt more like an autobiography as the protagonist was the author, Ayad Akhtar. Clearly there was turmoil in his life.

After he ruptured his spleen in a biking “accident“– to be investigated throughout the story – he began to see life in a different light. He took on a job as a professor of a creative writing class, but the students were a challenge at best. Besides the culture of today’s campus, Ayad experiences post-accident, transcendental experiences that he has a hard time accepting.

Interesting read, and masterful writing, but a little too heavy for my taste.

[Michael]

Review TK.

[Jessica Brainard]

The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar is a bold, ambitious novel that marks a striking evolution for the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and acclaimed author of Homeland Elegies and American Dervish. Published in fall 2026, it blends elements of mystery, campus intrigue, erotic tension, and profound spiritual inquiry into a work that feels both intimately personal and expansively metaphysical.

Plot and StyleThe story opens with a hit-and-run accident on a rural road that leaves the writer-narrator (echoing Akhtar himself in a style reminiscent of Homeland Elegies) physically shattered and existentially transformed. What follows is an awakening: a heightened state of empathy, perceptual shifts, and a blurring line between revelation and possible madness. As the protagonist investigates the incident and navigates a dangerous entanglement with a brilliant colleague, the narrative moves fluidly between rural America and Europe, and between Islamic and Christian traditions.

Akhtar’s prose is lucid yet lyrical, capable of shifting from taut, thriller-like momentum to passages that border on the ineffable. It reads like a campus novel crossed with a metaphysical thriller—without irony or piety, as one description aptly notes. The book explores memory, the soul, cultural fracture, and what “radiance” might persist in a broken age.

StrengthsThematic Depth: Akhtar tackles big questions—spiritual transformation, identity, desire, and the limits of rationality—with intellectual rigor and emotional vulnerability. Fans of his earlier work will recognize the sharp cultural observation, but here it feels more open to mystery and transcendence.

Character and Tension: The central relationships, particularly the erotic and intellectual pull toward the colleague, generate real suspense and stakes. The blend of personal awakening with a potential scandal keeps the pages turning.

Originality: Early readers, including Abraham Verghese and Mary Gaitskill, praise its uniqueness. Verghese calls it “a work of genius” that lingers long after reading, while Gaitskill highlights its oppositions: intimate yet wide-angled, compassionate yet ruthless.

Potential DrawbacksDepending on the reader, the novel’s metaphysical bent and occasional forays into the ineffable could feel elusive or overly abstract. Those seeking straightforward plot resolution or grounded realism might find some sections challenging. Its hybrid nature—part mystery, part spiritual memoir, part erotic drama—won’t suit every taste, though it rewards patient, open engagement.VerdictThe Radiance is Ayad Akhtar’s most daring work yet: a visionary novel that confronts fracture while seeking light. In an era of cynicism and division, its willingness to explore genuine spiritual possibility without dogma feels refreshing and necessary. Highly recommended for readers who appreciate ambitious literary fiction that engages both the mind and the deeper currents of experience. It’s the kind of book that leaves you quietly altered.

ayadakhtar.com

Rating: 4.5/5 — A radiant achievement that cements Akhtar as one of America’s most vital voices.

[Shirley Freeman]

Whew - this felt very meta - an autofiction novel about a writer named Ayad who writes and teaches autofiction. Akhtar has a prodigious vocabulary (I had to look up several words throughout). His story includes a deep understanding and analysis of current cultural trends, especially on college campuses. The author, and the main character, are clearly deep thinkers. Another way of saying it is that I didn't always understand everything he was saying but it was still an interesting read. The 'action' takes place a couple years before and after Ayad is critically injured when hit by a truck while riding his bicycle. The accident necessitated the removal of his spleen but also seemed to change his brain and body chemistry at least for some time. He seemed to feel everything, including other people's emotions, more deeply and he felt more connected to the universe/a higher power/something than ever before. All of this 'weirdness'/'wonderfulness' affects his relationships with friends, women, students etc. There is a lot to think about and absorb in this novel which, for me, will require subsequent re-reads.

[Nir Haramati]

Review written By Eva HD.

"Ayad Akhtar is a writer with a very forceful sense of what is. The fact that he comfortably inhabits the world of the mystical, the liminal, the felt-but-not-understood, the fundamentally irrational, is, paradoxically, as much an earmark of his writing as his workmanlike, scrubbed clean behind the ears, all-American pragmatism.

In 2020’s Homeland Elegies, readers were first introduced to Akhtar’s alter-ego, a writer who shares many biographical details with Ayad Akhtar himself – including his name. Wisconsin-bred, of Pakistani heritage, Ayad-the-narrator is a playwright and novelist of some acclaim who has found himself, at the outset of The Radiance, recently single and spending the pandemic in a sleepy college town in upstate New York, with only, for the most part, a local couple, Lucie and Stanford, for company. Lucie is a professor at the nearby university, and gets Ayad a job as a creative writing instructor there. That Ayad is infatuated with Lucie – whose scholarly work is largely concerned with sex, obsession, and love – and that Lucie is eventually disgraced in a sexual scandal that rocks the campus – is secondary to the inciting concern of the novel: the epiphany Ayad experiences after rupturing his spleen in a cycling accident. What follows is a series of events as emotionally unpredictable as they are, we are given to understand, inevitable.

A tale of exo-spiritual conversion moonlighting as a campus novel, and a meditation on the moldering decay at the heart of US academic and intellectual culture, The Radiance has a breathlessly compulsive quality – mirroring, not accidentally, the broader discourse it excoriates (deftly elegised as a “general atmosphere of not questioning your own motives”). Heart on its sleeve, infatuated with symmetries and confluences and consonances, Ayad’s brisk first-person narration plashes along, glittering like a sonata by Mozart – a discussion of whose genius bookends the novel’s revelations. This leitmotif is anything but incidental; the book’s rush of associations and ideas is wrapped in a structure as comforting and propulsive as the chord progression in a top 40 summertime banger. For amidst the philosophising and the earnest investigation of the political and spiritual uses – and limits – of human sexuality against a backdrop of vertiginous generational divide, there is the robustness of a page-turning romp: this is the most playful of Akhtar’s writing to date. The result is a cumulative – radiant, even – sense of knowing as powerful as the epiphany investigated within its pages.

Consequently, The Radiance is essentially spoiler-proof: we know from the beginning that Lucie is famed for anatomising in essay form a sexual adventure she had with a married professor twenty years prior; that she and her husband Stanford, a doctor, have had run-ins with locals resentful of their politics, class, and race; that Lucie’s pet student, Susan, is the lone freethinking bulwark against the performatively woke herd mentality of the rest of her classmates; and that an interrogation of Ayad’s post-traumatic effulgence will figure substantially in the narrative to come. We also know that any assumptions stitched into these first pages will unravel spectacularly before the book is through. (Clearly, Lucie’s brashly unapologetic, sex-as-power-tool brand of turn of the millennium feminism has aged poorly in the eyes of her students, many of whom see her as little more than a superannuated apologist for abuse.) Akhtar gives us the plot immediately off the top, as clinically as one might conduct an undergrad seminar on how to write a story: he tells us exactly what's on the menu, and then has the wherewithal to astound us with the feast. This is the book's structural, and philosophical, triumph. Like any great prestidigitator, the author knows that saying the magic is happening while making it happen, is the trick itself.

Akhtar is a writer who wears his influences on his sleeve, and nothing is too rarified or plebian for his magpie sensibility: nods to John Williams’ beloved campus classic Stoner and the Symposium by Plato jostle companionably against discussions of Finding Nemo and the Prophet Mohammed. Along the way, we are treated to a colourful cast of extras representing, variously, the confused political orthodoxies of the nativist working class; the adamantine moral chauvinism of righteous youth; the louche sexual mores of the intellectual elite; the bootstrap conservatism of ethnic minorities chafing against the dictates of the dominant culture, master’s tools firmly in hand; the floundering whimsy of the pundit class in the face of comprehensive social collapse; and the identity-starved peregrinations of contemporary American masculinity, at sea. Throughout, we are privy to a sort of irony-laced panegyric to the modern male desperate fumble towards selfhood in a world of wise (if often blinded by their own certitude), powerful, and ambitious women. Amid this feast of human folly, in Dickensian fashion people are regularly revealed, betrayed, and undone by their own features. But the portrait of society, and each struggling, unique human life within it is never ungentle: perhaps most surprising (given a general contemporary callousness in this regard) is Akhtar’s tenderness and attention in describing the very youngest of today’s adults. Ayad’s observations gleaned from the seminar he’s taken on with no small enthusiasm, for example that his students never speak “personally about sex unless it had caused them harm” are exquisitely sensitive and attuned to these young students’ lives and values, while carrying, as the unvarnished truth tends to do, a sting that borders on satire. His eventual realisation that he – along with everyone alive – is, amid the beauty of existence, also dying is all the more poignant.

Ayad-the-narrator, our writer protagonist, knows that names carry great power—he’s almost moved to tears when a therapist uses his—and selects them, as he himself tells us, with great care. What are we to make of him sharing this essential mark of identity with his canny creator? Again, at last, from the very beginning, his trick—the oldest in the book—is telling us everything."

[seher]

my goodness this book is tough to rate and review— it’s so unique and layered; it was spellbinding in a way that’s hard to describe. i will try.

what i enjoyed:

writing style / narrative approach: there is something mesmerizing about the way akhtar toggles between writing styles / narrative approaches / emotional registers / types of topics / versions of self. the variety is engaging and is somehow almost seamlessly woven together. and then layer in the autofiction piece and one’s natural curiosity about what’s fact vs. fiction, and you get pulled in deeper. the masterful execution of such a multi-modal / experimental novel is so impressive, both as a writer and reader.

articulation of the ineffable: as someone who has my own difficult to describe encounters with consciousness / spirituality / existential stuff, i was deeply moved by not just akhtar’s attempt to put such a thing to words but also awed by his ability to actually give shape to things— to the point that much mirrored my own experiences.

character: the self-awareness and humility of the main character realizing and naming his own idiosyncratic humanity and shortcomings was a delight to read. being a very self-aware person doesn’t shy from saying “the thing” about myself, the level of personal honesty displayed here was super refreshing.

what wasn’t for me:

i may contradict myself in these sections, but alas. such is the nature of this book.

writing style: the first 25-30% of the book was *dense*— hyper-intellectual, academic-leaning, and with lots and lots of fancy words. much of the time i was looking up what felt like every other word. my vocabulary isn’t super advanced by any means, but imagine most vocabularies could not keep up here. the tone felt so intellectual that it felt removed and too heady, making me considering DNF’ing several times. eventually, that style lightened and gave way to other styles and modes— those were the most engaging parts for me, the more grounded narrative and the hazy mystical moments were my personal fave. when the super intellectual style came back, i would skim a bit. initially, i found that style kind of navel-gazey and self-impressed, but as i got to know the character/author more, i realized that the style of writing probably represented a natural part of the character/author’s personality.

narrative/stylistic unevenness: so with that above note given, the book for me personally felt very uneven in how it engaged me. certain parts felt 2-star for me and certain felt 5-star. but net net, it strengths stood out more for me once i crossed the 30% threshold. this unevenness makes sense, though, given this book is a hybrid along so many axes. it does make me wonder, though— how many people will strongly resonate with *all* the aspects/styles here? my guess is most readers will resonate strongly with some aspects like i did, and a very small niche with the whole. what do i know though?! this is my first exposure to this author, so maybe this is what he’s known for and he has a relatively modest but rabid fan base.

[Sadaf Trimarchi]

My first introduction to Ayad Aktar was "Homeland Elegies," which I read in March 2021. I loved that novel so much, and his brutal description of his post-9/11 world, let me feel seen. I felt like so much of his experiences were relatable in a way very few authors of the South Asian diaspora lit ever connected for me. As much as I grew up loving them, this novel was distinctly American - and in how I saw myself as an American post 9/11.

That said, I was ecstatic to see that "The Radiance" was available on NetGalley and I could not wait to dive in. I was not disappointed, and I appreciated the advance copy. Thank you Simon & Schuster.

The basic plotline is simple enough - a writer in residence at a small college in upstate NY [he hooked me immediately here...] is hit by a local's pickup truck while riding his bicycle. It isn't accidental. The result of this, however, sets into motion a transformative journey for the writer as he begins to notice a fundamental shift in his perception of people, events, feelings, and how he experiences them. Events happen - there is conflict and misunderstanding over student-teacher dynamics - both his own and involving others who are part of his inner circle. There is exploration of his relationship and understanding of his father [akin to Homeland Elegies]. Then, there is the language. The language!

I experienced the author's use of language in a way I had almost forgotten could occur with writing. The variety of words used to describe the feeling of radiance - luminosity - coruscating - the richness of the vocabulary forced me to look up words in my old Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary [just to make sure Chat GPT wasn't lying.] I forgot how much I used to love doing that, and underlining words that were new to me. Reading a novel like this, that challenged me to understand a concept as philosophical as moving beyond words, to the feeling of the words and the effect on the listener... the words and then the experience of the words... it changes something in you, as a reader. It's beautiful.

This is a gorgeous novel, a challenging novel, and it will test your patience at times. However, the experience of reading it slowly and luxuriously - it will stay with me.

[Calynne]

3.5

I think this is one of those books where I can recognize how brilliant it is while also acknowledging that it wasn’t always easy for me to connect with. It took genuine effort to keep picking it up, and as a mood reader, that feels relevant to mention bc it took me a few months to finish this one.

We follow a writer whose life and sense of reality begin to unravel after a traumatic accident. Afterwards he’s pulled into a complicated relationship and a scandal. There’s buried family history and a genuinely surreal exploration of identity, faith, art, and human nature. The accident is essentially the catalyst for the narrator to start questioning the basic structures he has used to understand his life. It’s existential, metaphysical and spiritually complex.

I deeply appreciate books that explore the human condition and sit with all of its contradictions and messiness, and there’s so much of that here. I didn’t always find it enjoyable but I did find it thought provoking at times. The further the story goes, the more reality and fiction seem to bleed into eachother, and the whole thing felt a little like an acid trip.

Ultimately, I think I admired the writing and ideas more than I enjoyed actually reading it. To put it bluntly, this book was psychologically exhausting. Maybe I’m just not smart enough for it. Idk. Also, something about the narrative was slightly offputting and kept me at an arms length.

But honestly, it’s hard to put this book into words. I’m still sitting with it, and I suspect I’ll be thinking about it for a while, which feels like a pretty good reason to land at 3.5 stars.

Thank you NetGalley and S&S/Summit books for the digital and physical gifted copies in exchange for my honest review

[j ✩]

Thank you S&S/Summit Books x NetGalley for the eARC.

A deeply layered piece of autofiction that demands one's attention. As someone who already enjoys books that challenge me and require my full attention, I still found myself going back and rereading passages just to fully grasp their intended meaning and that says a lot about how dense and rewarding this novel is.

It functions on multiple frequencies, pulling you into the intricate dynamics of academic scandal at its most compelling center, while the metaphysical thread hums quietly underneath, adding unexpected dimension to what might otherwise be a straightforward campus drama.

Blurring the lines of reality by giving the narrator his own name, there is a clever depiction of confession that keeps you switching between what's fact and what's fiction. The academic world Akhtar constructs feels charged and alive and the scandal at its heart unfolds with enough psychological complexity to keep you genuinely unsettled about who to trust and what to believe.

The narrative pace can feel uneven at times and the stylistic intensity doesn't always let up but the payoff is a novel that genuinely lingers with you. The metaphysical elements end up reframing everything that came before them in quietly surprising ways rather than feeling like a distraction.

Definitely worth picking up if you're open to meeting a book on its own terms. I think this would make a fantastic book club read.

[East of Reality]

I’m very much on the fence when it comes to this book. For the good, I enjoyed the author’s ability with language and how clearly the character’s voice came through. While I did not like Ayad, I felt like I had at least a grasp on who he was — or rather, who he thought he was — and how he viewed his place in the world he lived in. Unfortunately, while I can appreciate the writing and the themes … I didn’t actually enjoy them.

When it comes to literary fiction I prefer a novel that focuses more on a broken character, and I enjoy watching them either heal over the course of the book, or embrace the anger and sorrow. Ayad … didn’t really do either of these things. While he had a great deal of philosophical introspection, and some very well articulated thoughts about gender politics and assumptions from a male point of view, I didn’t find him to really change or grow all that much in the course of the book.

While he came to realizations, while he went through events, he was still the same person he was at the beginning, no better, no worse. Combined with a very even, flowing writing style it led to a quiet monotone of a read that, while I enjoyed while reading, when I put the book down even for a moment, I found myself not really looking forward to picking it up again. Not due to a bad book or even a boring one, just … a very bland one.

A thoughtful read, but not one I’ll come back to. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC.

[B K178]

*The Radiance* is the newest novel by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and acclaimed author Ayad Akhtar. It follows Akhtar as he recovers from a hit-and-run accident and begins teaching an autofiction course at a local university. After the accident, he experiences various neurological and physiological symptoms, sometimes in dissociative ways. He accepts this as he begins to see life and time more vividly. During this period, the author gets involved in an on-campus scandal.

While I admire his writing style, this book caused me stress for a few reasons (which may not apply to other readers whatsoever). First, Akhtar describes these symptoms in a way that resembles epilepsy and migraines. As someone with neurological issues, I found these descriptions disturbing—they triggered my own unpleasant associations with those conditions. Moreover, I didn’t expect the scandal to be sexual and some parts of the story to involve sexual assault. Lastly, I don't always like how Gen Z is portrayed; however, the story effectively shows how viral stories spread, along with cancel culture and #MeToo.

Akhtar is clearly a very skilled author. His depiction of dissociation from his body and mind feels like living inside his autofiction—almost a lucid dream. Overall, I would definitely recommend. **For me just personally, I like the writing more than the story as a whole.**

Thanks to Simon & Schuster | S&S/Summit Books and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Diane Payne]

Akhar's novel weaves into the reader's head, making us wonder, is this true, is this what happened to Akhtar, or is his auto fiction premise simply playing with us? Eventually, readers just move along, not really caring, but still curious, and wonder if Billy, the cop, will find the person whose car hit our narrator/author, which tosses him into this sole-searching whirlwind of events that leaves him unable to enjoy sex, but he does enjoy this colleague at work, a woman who lands herself into a Me Too kind of situation with her creative writing student, and we're never exactly sure what happens here nor there, but the prose is so damn swift and deep we don't really care, but we do, and we assume all the cultural, sexual, and literary complications will resolve and reveal themselves by the end, and we were clued there would be footnotes, but somehow Trump, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and NAFTA sneak into the ending that then doesn't end in France, but more or less right here in America, where the narcissistic political madness never ends, and writers ponder what next after auto-fiction runs its mysterious reveal all about you and me pathway into the literary world, and when will novels finally be free of the damaging effects of white evangelicals who love Trump, and does it take being hit by a car to finally want to wake up, and wake up to this madness we want to avoid, and how does one workshop such trickery?

[Janine]

An auto-fiction novel about a Pakistani-American author who undergoes a spiritual wakening after surviving a hit-and-run accident.

The unnamed narrator starts with a story of scandal a friend, Lucie Neroponte, in the 1990s. It’s one of those MeToo stories which portents some of what follows as her story is interwoven in the novel. After the accident, the narrator experiences dreams and out-of-body experiences that are transformative. He then experiences problems with words - he reaches an auto fiction class at a local college. A local police man thinks the narrator may have experienced a hate crime but that is of little importance. As his ability to write is challenged as he’s challenged to write of this.

The novel is brilliantly written and highly thought provoking. Exploring yourself after what happened following a traumatic event is quite an interesting topic. I think this exploration was probably cathartic as well. But while a fine story, I think my dislike for auto-fiction perhaps prohibited me from fully appreciating this novel.

This novel is perfect for readers who like the auto-fiction genre or who have read the author’s previous books.

My thanks to NetGalley and S&S/Summit Books for granting me access to this ARC.

[Hope]

This book is quite meta and somewhat confusing. I feel conflicted about it. I can’t say that I enjoyed it, but I was still somewhat captivated by it. At times, I found it irritating. What initially attracted me was the language of spiritual awakening used to describe the protagonist's experience following his accident. He examines the mundane, the immanent, and the transcendent. The novel also delves into campus culture and the aftermath of #MeToo, BLM, and the COVID pandemic. Overall, the book unfolds like a fever dream.
Ayad Akhtar discusses “convincing fiction” as “a chain of linked actions” in the book, but much of the book seemed to be linked rather artificially, or it seemed like a vehicle for him to write about the state of the world, his observations on politics, race, etc.
The sections of the book where he discusses his internal, somewhat mystical experiences are richer and more engaging; however, the events feel bizarre and disconnected. It reads like autofiction—the main character's name is the same as the author's.
Thanks to Edelwiess for the ARC

[Jess Reads Horror]

Thank you NetGalley and Summit Books for the eARC.

This was such a unique experience. This is one of those books I would describe as “nothing major happens or there’s no clear direction, but it was fun to read.” The fact that Ayad in the book taught auto fiction and the book read like auto fiction felt very fresh and clever to me. I’ve never read anything by this author before, so I don’t know anything about his writing style or his life.

So many bits and pieces make up this book, including the Ayad teaching auto fiction, him getting injured, his relationship and finding out secrets regarding his family, and his relationship with his friends. There is so much to unpack and it’s like, I don’t even know where to start. I loved the character dynamics, the little stories embedded throughout the book, and the character development. I can understand this book and style not working, but it was a great read for me.

[Lilisa]

This is my third Ayad Akhtar book, but I could not get into this one, although I kept hoping I would. The main character, a professor, is injured in a mysterious accident that affects both his body and spirit. He recuperates and finds himself in a space different than before. His thoughts wander widely – from his close friend Lucie, her husband, and their lives, to the students in his creative writing class, one student in particular, campus drama, politics, culture, etc. He alternates between the physical and metaphysical. Often, it was challenging to follow the shifts, the constant referencing of literature greats – sometimes they felt relevant, but mostly it felt they designed to impress the reader. It was slow going and I struggled to finish it. This book was not for me but hopefully will be for other readers. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Nina Little]

I'll be honest - I can't remember the last time I was more lost and confused by an author's writing style and language. Ayad Akhtar is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and acclaimed novelist, but sadly, his visionary work of spiritual transformation was above and beyond me.

I'll be the first to admit I struggle with metaphysical literature. (Paulo Coelho is just about as lyrical as my realist and factual, former newspaper reporter brain can comprehend). The writing was beautifully descriptive but I struggled with the lack of character development and the erratic, stream of consciousness style flow. Plus, there were a host of literary, political, religious and other erudite references and discourses far above my head. I love to learn from reading books but this one was beyond my comprehension.

Thank you Summit Books @summitbooks for the opportunity to read this ARC. Sorry I wasn't the right reader for this novel.

[Chrissy Vaughn]

Do you like books that make you feel confused, a little bit dumb? Then this one's for you! Filled with deep literary references and religious and metaphysical themes, I'm not sure there was a point where I knew WTH was going on in this book. There was an attempted murder and attempted suicide, some kind of rapturous enlightenment, some professoring that may or may not have crossed the line, some in-your-face commentary on GenZ mental health and entitlement, some sexual issues, some childhood family trauma, and some very unprofessional psychology sessions. So. Much. Going. On. All while nothing REALLY happened. I do give credit for some talented writing of very descriptive and visual scenes (thus the two stars vs one), but outside of that, couldn't wait to finish this one--it was the closest I've come to a DNF in a while!
++++
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

[Cheryl Barnes]

I may be in the minority on The Radiance by Ayad Akhtar, but this one was a struggle for me. I had a hard time connecting with the story because I was never quite sure what the plot actually was. Much of it felt rambling, and I couldn’t tell if I was reading something grounded in reality, leaning into fantasy, or simply following the main character’s wandering thoughts.

The novel is set in an academic environment, and while I understand that college can be a time of self-discovery, the heavy focus on sexual exploration—especially in the context of professors and students—felt excessive and, at times, uncomfortable. I’m far from a prude, but the way these themes were presented just didn’t work for me.

I can see this appealing to readers who enjoy more abstract, introspective, or boundary-pushing literary fiction, but it wasn’t my kind of read. I rated it 2.5 stars and rounded up to 3

[Natalie]

The Radiance
By Ayad Akhtar

This is a very difficult read to plow through. I gave it my usual 100 pages – and it didn't engage me. Thus I didn't finish it.

And why? Well I found the writing very convoluted. Whole paragraphs that consisted of one long run-on sentence. I often found myself having to re-read these sentences, trying to figure out what the author was trying to say. I think this was supposed to be a commentary on American society today: the haves and have nots; the liberals and the conservatives – in short, the "them vs. us" mentality pervasive today.

But, if that is what the author was trying to discuss, along with the dumbing down of academia and the resulting inability of today's youth to act instead of being acted upon, his ideas got lost in the verbiage.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.