The Age of Reinvention
"With a lie you can go very far, but you can never go back."--Yiddish Proverb
Sam Tahar is a successful New York lawyer who seems to have it all: fame, fortune, an enviable marriage to a prominent socialite, two wonderful children... But all of his success is built on a single lie he told in a moment of weakness. What nobody knows is that he grew up Samir Tahar, a poor Muslim boy crammed inside the walls of a twenty-floor tower block in a gritty Paris suburb, destined for life as either a drug dealer or a delivery man at best. But Samir was not going to let destiny have its way with him -- "he was going to cut through the bars of his social jail cell, even if he had to do it with his teeth."
To escape that fate and start on a track that would eventually bring him to America, Samir took for himself the life story and family background of his best friend Samuel, a Jewish writer who would be stuck toiling away in France as a social worker for a nonprofit, praying that one day his neuroses would amount to some worthwhile creative output. When Sam discovers what Samir has accomplished overseas, the gilded life he is living there, he seethes with resentment.
Twenty years before, the two had met in law school in Montepelier. Fast friends, they were tied at the hip until the irresisistable Nina, torn between the two young men, ultimately chose Samuel -- the weaker link -- out of pity and compassion. Years later, in mid-life, the three meet again and the old love triangle is reignited, and Samir's lie seems certain to be exposed, even as his story becomes entangled in the murky U.S. War on Terror.
Powerful and dark, written with a breathless intensity and full of surprises, The Age of Reinvention is a Gatsbian tale about the fluid nature of identity, the past we can't fully escape, and the lies we tell each other and ourselves in order to carry on another day.
Karine Tuil (Author), George Newburn (Narrator)
Audiobook
