Trust: Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022

Description

Selected as one of The Oprah Daily's Best Books of 2022 A literary puzzle about money, power, and intimacy, TRUST is a novel that challenges the myths shrouding wealth, and the fictions that often pass for history. Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth-all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1938 novel that all of New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version of this story of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz's TRUST brilliantly puts this narrative into conversation with other accounts-and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. Provocative and propulsive, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the reality-warping gravitational pull of capital and the ease with which power can manipulate facts. PRAISE FOR TRUST "For all its elegant complexity and brilliant construction, Diaz's novel is compulsively readable, and despite taking place in the early 1900s, the plot reads like an indictment of the start of the twenty-first century with its obsession with obscure financial instruments and unhinged capital accumulation. A captivating tour de force that will astound readers with its formal invention and contemporary relevance." - The Booklist "A rip-roaring, razor-sharp dissection of capitalism, class, greed, and the meaning of money itself that also manages to be a dazzling feat of storytelling on its own terms... Important and timely. But the uniquely brilliant way in which Diaz tells that story, as meticulously researched as it is narratively exhilarating, makes it a novel not just for the present age but for the ages." - Vogue

Hernan Diaz's first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. He is also the author of a book of essays, and his fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. A recipient of a Whiting Award and the winner of the William Saroyan International Prize, he has been a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Trust is his second novel.

Diaz is a narrative genius whose work easily encompasses both a grand scope and the crisp and whiplike line. Trust builds its world and characters with subtle aplomb. What a radiant, profound and moving novel -- Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies Intricate, cunning and consistently surprising . . . Diaz has the whole literary past at his fingertips . . . [an] exhilarating and intelligent novel * New York Times Book Review * A sublime, richly layered novel. A story within a story within a story. -- Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist Trust glints with wonder and knowledge and mystery. Its plotlines are as etched and surreal as Art Deco geometry, while inside that architecture are people who feel appallingly real. This novel is very classical and very original: Balzac would be proud, but so would Borges. -- Rachel Kushner, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Mars Room A rip-roaring, razor-sharp dissection of capitalism, class, greed, and the meaning of money itself that also manages to be a dazzling feat of storytelling on its own terms . . . Uniquely brilliant . . . exhilarating . . . a novel for the ages. * Vogue * That rare jewel of a book - jaw-dropping storytelling against the backdrop of beautiful writing. Amidst all the noise in the world, whole days found me curled up on the couch, lost inside Diaz's brilliance -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of Red at the Bone A virtuoso performance . . . A spellbinding tale that illuminates the impact of money on all of our lives . . . Trust is that rare thing: a beautifully crafted novel that dares to confront some of our deepest socioeconomic schisms * Oprah Daily * For all its elegant complexity and brilliant construction, Diaz's novel is compulsively readable . . . A captivating tour de force that will astound readers with its formal invention and contemporary relevance. -- Booklist, starred review In this glorious puzzle of a novel, perspectives keep shifting and the wealth of one early-twentieth-century family keeps changing its origin-story. What a joy this is to read, suspenseful at every turn, the work of a rare and impressive talent. -- Joan Silber, author of Secrets of Happiness Diaz's Trust exposes the wild power that narrative holds . . . over the economy, historiography, hierarchies, over a person's life, truth, over the reader. A powerful, sinister tale in the form of a nesting doll, around which the modern economy fashions larger and larger macho casings -- Caoilinn Hughes, author of The Wild Laughter The audacity and scope of Hernan Diaz's extraordinary novel - a prism, a mystery, a revelation - are brilliantly matched by the quality of his prose. -- Jean Strouse, author of Morgan: American Financier Trust speaks to matters of the most urgent significance to the present day . . . Cleverly constructed and rich in surprises, this splendid novel offers serious ideas and serious pleasures on every beautifully composed page -- Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend