Zia Haider Rahman

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Zia Haider Rahman is the author of the novel In the Light of What We Know (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

Drawing on a background in anticorruption activism, financial services law, and investment banking and on training in mathematics, Rahman is developing an enterprise, using network science, with the mission to raise transparency in the public space.

In the Light of What We Know was published to international critical acclaim and won the prestigious James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, Britain’s oldest literary prize, previous winners of which include Cormac McCarthy, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, and Evelyn Waugh. The novel won or was short-listed or long-listed for many other prizes, and it has been translated into many languages. Rahman is a fellow at New America, in Washington, DC, and a senior fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, in Vienna, and has been appointed a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, and to the Michael and Nina Sundell Residency and the James Silberman and Selma Shapiro Residency at Yaddo. He was born in rural Bangladesh, grew up on a council estate (social housing) in London, England, and was educated at the University of Oxford (Balliol College), the University of Cambridge, and Yale University.