The Banker, the Visitor, His Wife and Her Lover

Amitava Kumar’s review of “In the Light of What We Know” by Zia Haider Rahman: NYT

Another month, another bright young star in the firmament of Indian writing.

I didn’t write that sentence. It appeared in these pages almost 14 years ago, in August 2000, opening a review of a debut novel written by a young writer who was an investment banker on Wall Street. When I first read that line, I remember wondering how long it would be before the lights were turned off and the attention of the literary marketplace moved to another patch of the sky.