Entitlement

A Guardian Highlight for 2024

Brooke is thirty-three, resolutely single and slightly adrift. She wants her work and life to have meaning – and she finds it at the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation, where she's tasked with assisting an octogenarian billionaire in the noble quest to give away his hard-earned fortune.

When Asher Jaffee takes a special interest in Brooke, it's hard for her not to fall under his spell. He's attracted to her intelligence, her willingness to spar with him, her refusal to be deferential. She's intoxicated by the proximity to his money and power – and his apparent willingness to share both with her. Asher offers Brooke a first-hand look at how the one percent truly live and work: above the rest of us in an atmosphere that exists only for them. But before long, being under Asher's wing is not enough, and Brooke finds herself in deep water as she blurs the lines between what belongs to Asher, and what should belong to her.

Keenly observed and compulsively disturbing, Entitlement is an engrossing and resonant tale of money, morality and madness, affirming Rumaan Alam as a major literary talent of our time.

About the Author

Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture, as well as two other novels. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.