A novel by Agri Ismaïl
January 13, 2026 • 6 x 9 • 360 pages • 9781566897471
A cutting, hypermodern saga of money, family, and survival for fans of Zadie Smith, Patricia Lockwood, and Mohsin Hamid.
On the eve of the 1979 Revolution, Rafiq Hardi Kermanj, founder of Kurdistan’s communist party, flees Iran for London with his young family. Thirty years later, Rafiq's children attempt to carve out futures in the ruthless, alienating structures of twenty-first century capitalism. Eldest son Mohammad struggles to survive the cutthroat world of London finance. Siver, the only daughter, escapes a loveless marriage to raise her daughter in Dubai, hawking haute couture at a luxury mall. Terminally online hacker genius Laika gambles with fate as he creates an algorithm that perfectly mirrors the trading activity of Goldman Sachs.Though their circumstances differ drastically, the Hardis are united by their obsession with money and desperate efforts to locate meaning and identity within the numb isolation of modern immigrant life.
Equal parts heartfelt family story and razor-sharp satire, Hyper is an ambitious, thrilling articulation of life in the twenty-first century, marking debut author Agri Ismaïl as one of the most perceptive and exciting new voices in contemporary literature.
About the Author
Agri Ismaïl is a Kurdish author based in Sweden who has worked as a corporate lawyer in London, Dubai, and Iraqi Kurdistan. His work has been published in The White Review, The Rumpus, Guernica, and Asymptote, amongst other places. His piece “Haunted Home” won the 2016 Stack award for best nonfiction for The Outpost, and he was longlisted for the 2017 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.
Praise for Hyper
Longlisted for the 2025 August Prize
Longlisted for the 2025 Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize
“A novel in the truest sense. Ambitious, epic, heartfelt. . . I was blown away.” —Fredrik Backman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People
“A book of big, heady ideas captured in intense, minute, unflinching detail. Ismaïl is very strong on the interior desolation of immigrants showing a collapsed family unit that doesn’t know it’s collapsed.” —The Guardian
“Both a rich novel of ideas and a moving family saga… Hyper is notable for the fully rounded characters it brings to life… Agri Ismaïl is a master of dramatic tension, too.” —Times Literary Supplement
“A lively and intelligent novel about three siblings whose fates are governed by globalization and money.” —2025 Borås Tidning’s Debutant Prize Judges’ Citation
“Agri Ismaïl cuts with precision straight into modern-day society and asks questions about money and rootlessness. Hyper is a powerful drama about a refugee family adrift in the backdrop of contemporary capitalism. With great narrative vitality and a keen eye for detail, it is a novel of ideas that never gets in the way of its rich gallery of characters.” —2025 August Prize Judges’ Citation
“A tightly stitched work of melancholy wit and rueful irony that charts the fortunes of one Kurdish family across generations and geolocations. This is an absorbing and satisfying saga, carried by universal emotion, with each of its sibling protagonists in circumstances of increasing desperation, disillusionment, and displacement. Hyper evokes what it feels like to live now: to surf on or surrender to the mercurial waves of global capital.” —Tom Benn, author of Oxblood
“Ambitious and intricate, panoramic in scope yet alive to the intimate details of everyday existence, Hyper marks the arrival of a significant, keenly perceptive new voice in literature.” —Sam Byers, author of Perfidious Albion
“Ismaïl destroys the concept of the “international family saga” by feeding it through the 21st-century capitalist shredder. Funny, tender, ultramodern and brilliant.” —Ruby Cowling, author of The Paradise
“A satire of capitalism, a parable of money, a saga of 'statelessness' and diaspora, and a most heartfelt chronicle of fractured families. Delicious, harrowing, gutting, hilarious, and deeply necessary, Hyper is a masterpiece.” —Porochista Khakpour, author of Brown Album
