In New York, Alice, a young editor, begins an affair with Ezra Blazer, a world-famous, much older writer. At Heathrow airport, Amar, an Iraqi-American economist en route to Kurdistan, finds himself detained for the weekend. What draws these characters together, and how do their lives connect? A powerful novel about the power plays and imbalances of contemporary life - between young and old, West and Middle East, fairness and injustice, talent and luck, and the personal and the political. A major new literary talent.