Lisa Halliday

Living in Milan, Lisa Halliday works as a freelance editor and translator. Her short story Stump Louie has appeared in The Paris Review and she has received the Whiting Award for fiction for her debut novel Asymmetry.

Told in three distinct and uniquely compelling sections, Asymmetry explores the imbalances that spark and sustain many of our most dramatic human relations: inequities in age, power, talent, wealth, fame, geography, and justice. The first section, Folly, tells the story of Alice, a young American editor, and her relationship with the famous and much older writer Ezra Blazer. The second – Madness – is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American man who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan when he is detained by immigration officers in Heathrow. These two seemingly disparate stories gain resonance as their perspectives interact and overlap, with yet new implications for their relationship revealed in an unexpected final act.

Playful and inventive, Asymmetry is a novel which illuminates the power plays and imbalances of contemporary life.