At Heathrow airport, Amar, an Iraqi-American economist en route to Kurdistan, finds himself detained for the weekend. What draws these characters together, and how do their lives connect? Playful and inventive, tender and humane, Asymmetry is a novel which illuminates the power plays and imbalances of contemporary life - between young and old, West and Middle East, fairness and injustice, talent and luck, and the personal and the political. It introduces a major new literary talent, writing about the world today with astonishing versatility, acuity and daring. 'The reveal is both astonishing and retrospectively inevitable. Halliday has written a transgressive roman a clef, a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction. Asymmetry is extraordinary.' - New York Times 'A witty, entertaining novel that asks perceptive questions about Western complacency. It's smart enough to avoid earnestness and so well constructed that you almost can't see the joints.' - Literary Review