Description

‘A fascinating, thrilling novel’ Samira Ahmed, Front Row, BBC Radio 4
‘Brilliant…a book of big, heady ideas’ Guardian
‘A state of the nation novel’ TLS

Rafiq Hardi Kermanj, founder of the Communist Party of Kurdistan, has fled Tehran and settled in London. As his three children embrace their new adult lives they each struggle with an increasingly desperate 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 in a condo near Wall Street, designing the trading algorithms that will ultimately prove his downfall.

Sharp, topical, and powerful, Hyper is a story about what remains of our humanity in a world increasingly dominated by the flows of capital.

‘Ambitious, epic, heartfelt… I was blown away’ Fredrik Backman
‘A tightly stitched work of melancholy wit and rueful irony… Hyper evokes what it feels like to live now’ Tom Benn
‘Hyper marks the arrival of a significant, keenly perceptive new voice in literature’ Sam Byers

Publisher Review

‘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 * ‘Ismail 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. Ismail is very strong on the interior desolation of immigrants…showing a collapsed family unit that doesn’t know it’s 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 Ismail 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 *