A Hero of Our Time: A Novel - Softcover

Ruthnum, Naben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 077109650X ISBN 13: 9780771096501

Verlag: McClelland & Stewart, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

For fans of Yellowface and American Fiction, A Hero of Our Time is a vicious takedown of superficial diversity initiatives and tech culture, with a beating heart of broken sincerity that the Toronto Star calls "a powerful, unexpected reading experience."

Osman Shah is a pitstop on his white colleague Olivia Robinson’s quest for corporate domination at AAP, an edutech startup determined to automate higher education.
Osman, obsessed by Olivia’s ability to successfully disguise ambition and self-interest as collectivist diversity politics, is bent on exposing her. Aided by his colleague turned comrade-in-arms Nena, who loathes and tolerates him in equal measure, Osman delves into Olivia's twisted past. But at every turn, he's stymied by his unfailing gift for cruel observation, which he turns with most ferocity on himself, without ever noticing what it is that stops him from connecting to anyone in his past or present. As Osman loses his grip on his family, Nena, and everything he thought was essential to his identity, he confronts an enemy who may simply be too good at her job to be defeated.

A Hero of Our Time cracks the veneer of well-intentioned race conversations in the West, dismantles cheery narratives of progress through tech and “streamlined” education, and exposes the venomous self-congratulation and devouring lust for wealth, power, and property that lurks beneath.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Naben Ruthnum lives in Toronto, and is the author of Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. As Nathan Ripley, he is the author of two thrillers, Find You In the Dark and Your Life is Mine. He also writes for film and television.
 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Much of fiction is asking ourselves what happened in the woods. When we were children, or when we vanished, or when the people we cared about most left our lives only to haunt, to be remembered, to return as altered beings who have grown beyond
the control we have over them. Things had happened to us among The Gentlemen Of the Pines. Our presence had manifested a speech by Mr. Robinson. Nena had called her patience with me into question, perhaps terminally. And we had passed into Olivia
Robinson’s life in a deeper way than I would have thought possible, accessing the photo-negative of her politics, the authentic, pure racism that illuminated her progressiveness, the philosophy she hadn’t rejected so much as reshaped. Oliver Robinson’s rejigged white imperialism, his gentle missionary quest to shut us all up and help us all out.
 
Olivia appeared over my left shoulder, holding a square-cut glass with a heavy base. I saw her without turning, in the slanted mirror that encircled the bar. She was wearing a vintage suit, pinstriped and belted. Her eyes, the gentle blue of a screen saver sky, communicated no information, contained nothing but my reflected fear when they met mine in the mirror.
 
I once licked a broken nine-volt battery when I was a child, drinking the shock as I stared unfocused at the spume of crusted acid leaking from the shell. My pores were producing this same sensation and substance now, adrenalized sweat pushing through
a melting aluminum barrier of antiperspirant. I moved on my stool, my clothes crackling like foil, my elbow twitching like a malleted knee when Olivia touched it.


“I was so hoping to catch both of you guys, but I guess Nena’s being her usual responsible super-efficient self and sleeping or something totally dull like that, right? Sorry to just jack-in-the-box here but your company phone’s off and I thought it would be less invasive to ask Amy where you’d booked in than to peel your private cell off your personnel file. You should really just use your business as your personal.
It’s very early-aughts not to, Osman. Not an order but I think it’s a good idea, personally. And I hope you don’t feel, like, intruded on.”
 
Olivia sat next to me, and we both looked up at the mirror for a moment, as though checking to see there was no one behind us, that the rest of the room had indeed vanished.

“Nena has a place in town,” I said. Or really, found myself saying, as they do in books, when the words precede thought, when the interrogator’s needle quill through the tear duct has prodded just the right area of brain to elicit confession. “A
couple. So no hotel for her.”


“We used to talk investments when we were at HQ together,” Olivia said. The liquid in her glass didn’t bubble, or act with any of the viscous cling of booze. It was water playing liquor. “I always admired that, how she could focus on all these projects
she had going while still conscientiously doing her job. Which she does, obviously. I mean, how about that shit today? We have Parnell locked. It’s over. Mockton and I had cocktails after that marathon admin meeting—God, I promise to forever forbid AAP from getting that bloated—and I really put a pin in the Beagle interest, showed him a couple of texts with Brody and maybe if I’m being honest accidentally scrolled past a couple of photos of Brody and me in Mexico City and he was so sold he sent six key emails from the fucking table.”

I smiled. I felt beer calories settle into my tits. Sweat formed and simmered in the crease just below them. Olivia tried to swirl her ice cubes, but there wasn’t enough
water left in the glass. She shook her head and laughed, at herself, toward me.


“I always forget who I’m talking to. After a day of hustles like this. I forget what company I’m in, that I can drop the sales talk and boardroom bro terms and just really be. Talk, really talk. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“So forget all that. Let’s leave it behind at Parnell. Let’s just speak. I want you to know, Osman, that I trust you. I don’t think Nena quite gets me, and that’s cool. She was a total terminator in the right role, and the company is well aware of that. But she
has defences in her that I just cannot ever see her letting go, and for a woman in business those defences are dead necessary but at a certain point all that steel turns you into your own anchor, you know?” Olivia paused, either because this was a line she had perfected earlier and wanted to make sure it stuck, or because it was a spontaneous one good enough that she was banking it to use again. She continued.
“Nena doesn’t trust, and as a result, she’ll never believe that she is truly trusted, that the faith we all have in her is unshakeable. You’re not like that, Osman. You have softness in you. Nena’s guard makes her more vulnerable than she could ever believe. I sense that, and I take on the pain of it myself. I know how humiliating it is to be looked at as less-than, as other, as foreign and despicable. What I didn’t learn from being a woman, I learned from being sick. From what my illness triggered in others, I mean: I could accept pity, I could understand that. But so many people looked at me with fear, Osman. Not of what I could do, but what I represented.”
 
I recognized the evolution of her conference speech, how she had now integrated the
genuine reaction she’d had to my joke—that fear created power. Olivia had found a way to acknowledge that this was still true, but when you are feared because of a tumour instead of a possible concealed AR-15 or dynamite vest, the tumour gets the credit and the fear-power. She watched me think, and pivoted.

“That’s part of being an empath, accessing all this pain that others are going through, and feeling it nest into you, without totally overtaking your ability to function. You’re not quite an empath, Osman. I would know. We recognize it in others. But
what you are is vulnerable, exposed. And I want you to know, please don’t let that go. It’s specifically that quality that means there’s a place for you in AAP leadership. I really do see a rising future for you. Getting this face time is half the reason I came up
here. I knew that Nena could totally close Mockton on her own. Sold him that brilliant little package that she came up with. But I wanted to see you. I was afraid that when I promoted Vikram Chandra, I gave you the wrong idea of how much you’re valued.
You’ve seen Vikram. You know him. He glows, Osman, even from a screen, and we can’t let that quality go. His value to us is unique. Have you ever talked to him?”

“No. A bit.”

“He’s not a linear thinker. I don’t know if he’s a lateral thinker, we haven’t figured that out, but he’s just entirely himself. You know? Like, he doesn’t need to shift modes. He’s just there, present, Vikram. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

I couldn’t tell if she was redefining the stupidity I’d always seen in Vikram as invaluable omnidirectional thinking, or letting me know that she thought he was stupid, too.

“I think Vikram was a perfect choice, Olivia.”

“I want it out of the way that he wasn’t promoted in your place. That title, that role, it’s for Vikram. He’ll fit with the team around him. But we haven’t created a place for you at the top that can truly channel what makes you great, Osman....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: McClelland & Stewart
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 077109650X
• ISBN 13: 9780771096501
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar