“Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail – we are ruined by forces beyond our control.”
Hernan Diaz, Trust
An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, Trust engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.
In a 2017 interview with Joel Pinckney for The Paris Review, Diaz remarks, “To me, one of the most fascinating formal problems in literature is point of view, because taken to its ultimate limit, I think it’s also an ethical problem, since it’s related to power….how much about your characters do you know? How far into situations or people can you see? Is it right, just to solve a narrative problem or achieve an effect, to break the laws you had set for yourself?” His Pulitzer-winning Trust is comprised of four distinct sections with four points of view – playing with the trust between reader and narrator.
Hernan Diaz is the author of two novels that have been translated into more than twenty languages. His first novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Trust was named a New York Times Top Ten Books Of 2022; Washington Post Top Ten Books Of 2022; Barack Obama’s Favorite Books Of 2022; longlisted For The 2022 Booker Prize; and winner of the 2022 Kirkus Prize.
More about Hernan Diaz
Hernan Diaz’ website
The Guardian, July 8, 2023
Hernan Diaz: ‘If ever I find myself on the page, I view it as an immense failure’
The Booker Prizes, 2023
Hernan Diaz interview: ‘I take the ethical implications of storytelling very seriously. I’m careful never to deceive anyone’
The Paris Review, June 2, 2022
Writing Is a Monstrous Act: A Conversation with Hernan Diaz
“There is a dazzling intelligence behind this novel, which challenges us to rethink everything we know both about the institutions on which nations are built and the narratives by which stories are told. Sly, sophisticated, insistently questioning, Diaz writes with assurance, determined to rob us of every certainty.”
THE BOOKER PRIZES
Books
Copies of Trust , along with other titles by Hernan Diaz, are available from White Whale Bookstore.