Rumaan Alam

His parents emigrated from Bangladesh to the United States in the early 1970s. Alam, one of four siblings, was born in 1977 and grew up in a suburb of Washington, D.C. His father being an architect and his mother being a paediatrician, he had an upper-middle class lifestyle while growing up in a mostly white area.^[3] He studied writing at Oberlin College.^[2]

He is the author of four novels: Leave the World Behind, That Kind of Mother, Rich and Pretty, and Entitlement. He also hosts two podcasts for Slate.

Leave the World Behind was acclaimed by book critics^[4] and nominated for the 2020 National Book Award.^[5] It was later adapted as a 2023 film for Netflix with the same name.^[6][7][8]

He and his husband, photographer David Land, whom he met on a blind date in 2003, adopted two boys.^[9][1]

• Rich and Pretty. New York, NY: Ecco. 2016-06-07. ISBN 978-0-06-242993-3. OCLC 921864794.
• That Kind of Mother. New York: Ecco. 2018-05-08. ISBN 978-0-06-266760-1.
• Leave the World Behind (2020, Ecco Press) ISBN 978-0-06-266764-9 ^[10]
• Getaway (2022)
• Entitlement. Penguin Group. 2024-09-17. ISBN 978-0-593-71846-9.^{[11][12][13][14]}