Kepler’s welcomes master novelist Rumaan Alam to discuss his latest novel, Entitlement, a riveting tale about money and morality. Brooke, the book's main protagonist, wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?
Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement speaks to our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.
About the authors
Rumaan Alam is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as the novels Rich and Pretty and That Kind of Mother. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.
Alka Joshi is the internationally bestselling author of the Jaipur Trilogy: The Henna Artist, The Secret Keeper of Jaipurand The Perfumist of Paris. Her debut novel, The Henna Artist, was a New York Times Bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub Pick, an LA Times Bestseller, a Toronto Star Bestseller, an Indie Bookstores Bestseller, a Cosmopolitan Best Audiobook, and an Amazon and Goodreads favorite. It was Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and has been translated into 29 languages. It’s currently in development at Netflix as an episodic series. In 2023, Alka was selected for the Forbes 50 Over 50 List, women who are shattering age and gender norms across all sectors of the American economy and culture. Alka was born in India and came to the U.S. with her family at the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts. Her fourth novel, Six Days in Bombay, releases April 15, 2025.
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