On this week’s episode, sponsored by AmazonOriginal Stories, New York Times–bestselling author Mohsin Hamid joins us to discuss The Last White Man (Riverhead, Aug. 2). This slim, brilliant novel follows 2017’s Exit West, a Booker Prize and Kirkus Prize finalist.

Here’s a bit more from our starred review of The Last White Man: “Hamid’s latest opens with a scenario worthy of Kafka: A young man named Anders awakens ‘to find he [has] turned a deep and undeniable brown.’ Faced with the shock of this metamorphosis, he punches the mirror that reveals the stranger who is he.…Hamid’s story is poignant and pointed, speaking to a more equitable future in which widespread change, though confusing and dislocating in the moment, can serve to erase the divisions of old as they fade away with the passing years.… A provocative tale that raises questions of racial and social justice at every turn.”

Hamid and host Megan Labrise discuss Anders’ response to his change in skin tone; Anders’ relationship with high school sweetheart, Oona; the universality of wanting to believe you are a “good person”; the incantatory quality of longer sentences; how society shapes our understanding of our selves; the pleasures of working with longtime editor Rebecca Saletan; profound loss as an essential component of human existence; and much more.

You can listen to new episodes of Fully Booked every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or at kirkusreviews.com/podcast.