Hyper

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For fans of Zadie Smith and Moshin Hamid - an immersive novel of a Kurdish family scattered across London, New York and Dubai, set against the financial crash of 2008 Rafiq Hardi Kermanj, founder of the Communist Party of Kurdistan, is forced to flee Tehran for London with his family. In London, they suffer the shame of penury and migration layered on Kurdish statelessness. The lives of Rafiq's three children becoming increasingly dependent on their relationship to money- Siver, the only daughter, escapes into an unhappy marriage in Baghdad before fleeing to raise her daughter as a single mother in Dubai. Mohammed, the eldest, stays in London to climb the unforgiving ladder of the financial sector. Laika, the youngest, retreats into a contactless digital life, designing the trading algorithms that will ultimately prove his downfall in a condo near Wall Street. Sharp, topical, and powerful, Hyper is a story about what remains of our humanity in a world increasingly dominated by the flows of capital. Perfect for fans of Zadie Smith, Moshin Hamid, and Jennifer Egan. 'Delicious, harrowing, gutting, hilarious, and deeply necessary, Hyper is a masterpiece.' Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album

Reviews

'A tightly stitched work of melancholy wit and rueful irony that charts the fortunes of one Kurdish family across generations and geolocations. This is an absorbing and satisfying saga, carried by universal emotion, with each of its sibling protagonists in circumstances of increasing desperation, disillusionment, and displacement. Hyper evokes what it feels like to live now: to surf on or surrender to the mercurial waves of global capital * Tom Benn, author of Oxblood *
'Ambitious and intricate, panoramic in scope yet alive to the intimate details of everyday existence, Hyper marks the arrival of a significant, keenly perceptive new voice in literature' * Sam Byers, author of Perfidious Albion *
Ismal destroys the concept of the international family saga by feeding it through the 21st-century capitalist shredder. Funny, tender, ultramodern and brilliant.' * Ruby Cowling, author of The Paradise *
A book of big, heady ideas captured in intense, minute, unflinching detail. Ismal is very strong on the interior desolation of immigrantsshowing a collapsed family unit that doesnt know its collapsed * Guardian *
'A satire of capitalism, a parable of money, a saga of 'statelessness' and diaspora, and a most heartfelt chronicle of fractured families. Delicious, harrowing, gutting, hilarious, and deeply necessary, Hyper is a masterpiece. * Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album *
Hyper weaves parallel worlds into a broken tapestry of finance, familial disruption and the remnants of internationalist aspirations. Flash crashes briefly illuminate desperate journeys over borders, Dubai malls and the US armoured vehicles of Baghdad. It is not only the best but also the most contemporary novel I've read for a long time. * Hito Steyerl *
'A fascinating, thrilling novel' * Samira Ahmed, Front Row, BBC Radio 4 *
Both a rich novel of ideas and a moving family saga Hyper is notable for the fully rounded characters it brings to life Agri Ismal is a master of dramatic tension, too * Times Literary Supplement *
'A novel in the truest sense. Ambitious, epic, heartfelt... I was blown away.' * Fredrik Backman *

Author Bio

Agri Ismail is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Litro, 3-AM Magazine, and Asymptote amongst other places. His piece 'Haunted Home' won the 2016 Stack award for best non-fiction for The Outpost, runner-up in the Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fictionLab Prize for Experimental Non-Fiction, and he was longlisted for the 2017/2018 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize. Hyper is his first novel.