Hyper

Ismaïl debuts with a captivating satire of materialism and ambition. In 1978, Rafiq Hardi Kerman, founder of the Communist Party of Kurdistan, escapes Iran with his wife, Xezal, and their three young children—Mohammed, Siver, and Laika—and sets up a new life for them in London. Some 30 years later, Siver flees Baghdad for Dubai with her six-year-old daughter, Zara, after Karim, her husband of eight years, announces he wants to marry a second wife. Siver has difficulty finding work but ultimately lands a job at a luxury clothing boutique, where her role is to “soothe” customers with her British accent and mannerisms and “not make them believe for a single moment that they were somewhere they did not belong.” But Siver has never truly belonged anywhere, and she struggles without the wealth she’s become accustomed to. Meanwhile, Laika, a hacker, builds an algorithm that mirrors Goldman Sachs’s high-frequency trading bots in New York City and devotes his free time and money to watching a cam girl online, while Mohammed attempts to climb the ladder of the financial industry in London by promoting his Islamic Credit Card to investors while going by the “Flemingesque initial M.” Ismaïl’s characterizations of all three siblings are deliciously perceptive and painfully tense. Cutting and self-assured, this heralds the arrival of a thrilling new voice in the vein of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (Jan.)