Heather Nielsen

But certainly Akhtar has said in some interviews, further clarification, that the parents are obviously based closely on his own parents, but only to some extent.

I mean, I read, you know, found when and where his mother died, even that's been changed.

He's changed the first names of his parents, but certainly in terms of his father was a very successful cardiologist.

So without giving away the ending of the book, I can say that Ayad Akhtar gives his fictional father an alternative future.

In fact, his real father died very shortly after he had died.

finished writing the book.

So his father, his real father never actually read the book.

So yeah, you can sort of, but yes, it lures you in and you're thinking, which is true, which is not.

And he said that most of the characters are composite characters.

And that makes sense.

You know, you think these larger than life figures are kind of representative types of

in some ways.

And so they obviously based on combinations of people.

One of the things, this is going to sound really out there, another one of the books that this evokes for me, although I don't know whether it's deliberate or not, is Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, because this reads like a kind of opposite mirror to American Psycho.

Because if you remember, I mean, in American Psycho, the protagonist in the 1980s, who's a

investment banker.

And he's a crazed murderer, but the murder's in a way a metaphor or analogy for corporate predation.

It's a book against capitalism.

And that's in a way this book, if it's about anything, it's about American dependence on money, American kind of prioritising of money over everything else.

And of course, in American Psycho, Donald Trump in the 1980s is the protagonist's hero and role model.