Told from the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction, this unrivaled novel about money, power, intimacy and perception is centered around the mystery of how the Rask family acquired their immense fortune in 1920s-1930’s New York City. - (Baker & Taylor)

"An award-winning writer of absorbing, sophisticated fiction delivers a stylish and propulsive novel rooted in early 20th century New York, about wealth and talent, trust and intimacy, truth and perception. In glamorous 1920s New York City, two characters of sophisticated taste come together. One is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; the other, the brilliant daughter of penniless aristocrats. Steeped in affluence and grandeur, their marriage excites gossip and allows a continued ascent -- all at a moment when the country is undergoing a great transformation. This is the story at the center of Harold Vanner's novel Bonds, which everyone in 1938 New York seems to have read. But it isn't the only version. Provocative, propulsive, and repeatedly surprising, Hernan Diaz's Trust puts the story of these characters into conversation with the "the truth"-and in tension with the life and perspective of an outsider immersed in the mystery of a competing account. The result is an overarching novel that becomes more exhilarating and profound with each new layer and revelation, engaging the reader in a treasure hunt for the truth that confronts the reality-warping gravitational pull of money, and how power often manipulates facts"-- - (Baker & Taylor)

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BOOKER PRIZE

“Buzzy and enthralling . . . A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery . . . Fun as hell to read.” —Oprah Daily

"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ’20s and Great Depression." —Vanity Fair

“A riveting story of class, capitalism, and greed.” —Esquire

"Exhilarating.” —New York Times

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.
Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.
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. - (Penguin Putnam)

Hernan Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Trust. Translated into more than thirty languages, Trust also received the Kirkus Prize, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and Time magazine, and it was one of The New Yorker’s 12 Essential Reads of the Year and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Trust is currently being developed as a limited series for HBO. Diaz’s previous novel, In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and it won the William Saroyan International Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Atlantic, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He has received the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a fellowship from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. - (Penguin Putnam)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Pulitzer Prize finalist Diaz (In the Distance, 2017), returns with a multilayered novel that pieces together a searing portrait of a New York financial elite during the early-twentieth-century world through four discrete documents. The first is a novel written by Harold Vanner about the reluctant scion of a tobacco empire, Benjamin Rask, an inept athlete, an apathetic clubman, an unenthusiastic drinker, an indifferent gambler, a lukewarm lover. The second is a partial memoir written by Andrew Bevel, a New York financier with a clear resemblance to the character in Vanner's novel, who seeks retribution for Vanner's fictionalization of his life. The third piece presents the memoirs of Ida Partenze, a journalist turned accomplice to Bevel's ambitions to ruin Vanner, who also seeks to undermine Bevel's marriage. The final section delivers the journal entries of Mildred, Bevel's wife, adding yet another facet to the stories-within-stories. For all its elegant complexity and brilliant construction, Diaz's novel is compulsively readable, and despite taking place in the early 1900s, the plot reads like an indictment of the start of the twenty-first century with its obsession with obscure financial instruments and unhinged capital accumulation. A captivating tour de force that will astound readers with its formal invention and contemporary relevance. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

A tale of wealth, love, and madness told in four distinct but connected narratives. Pulitzer finalist Diaz's ingenious second novel—following In the Distance (2017)—opens with the text of Bonds, a Wharton-esque novel by Harold Vanner that tells the story of a reclusive man who finds his calling and a massive fortune in the stock market in the early 20th century. But the comforts of being one of the wealthiest men in the U.S.—even after the 1929 crash—are undone by the mental decline of his wife. Bonds is followed by the unfinished text of a memoir by Andrew Bevel, a famously successful New York investor whose life echoes many of the incidents in Vanner's novel. Two more documents—a memoir by Ida Partenza, an accomplished magazine writer, and a diary by Mildred, Bevel's brilliant wife—serve to explain those echoes. Structurally, Diaz's novel is a feat of literary gamesmanship in the tradition of David Mitchell or Richard Powers. Diaz has a fine ear for the differing styles each type of document requires: Bonds is engrossing but has a touch of the fusty, dialogue-free fiction of a century past, and Ida is a keen, Lillian Ross–type observer. But more than simply succeeding at its genre exercises, the novel brilliantly weaves its multiple perspectives to create a symphony of emotional effects; what's underplayed by Harold is thundered by Andrew, provided nuance by Ida, and given a plot twist by Mildred. So the novel overall feels complex but never convoluted, focused throughout on the dissatisfactions of wealth and the suppression of information for the sake of keeping up appearances. No one document tells the whole story, but the collection of palimpsests makes for a thrilling experience and a testament to the power and danger of the truth—or a version of it—when it's set down in print. A clever and affecting high-concept novel of high finance. Copyright Kirkus 2022 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Reviews

A Pulitzer and Pen/Faulkner finalist for In the Distance, Diaz uses a multilayered narrative to investigate money and power, truth and perception, and early 20th-century U.S. history. In 1920s New York, Wall Street tycoon Benjamin Rask and his wife, Helen, of offbeat aristocratic origins, are the crème of society's crème. They're also the protagonists of the novel Bonds, published in 1938 and on everyone's reading list. But the novel doesn't reveal the whole truth about the characters, who here engage with other accounts to share the big picture. I've heard raves.

Library Journal Reviews

After debuting with the epic Pulitzer Prize finalist novel In the Distance, Diaz returns with pokes at the boundaries of fiction. It's made of four "subworks" in various states of completion that together shape the tale of a fictional American oligarch, Andrew Bevel, whose skilled stock market manipulations may have caused the Twenties boom and subsequent Great Depression. The first work is a short novel, a fictionalized take of Bevel's success and his wife's loss of her grip on reality. The second is ostensibly Bevel's unfinished autobiography, which he wrote to correct supposed errors in the novel. Actually, it's written by a ghostwriter, Ida Partenza, whose memoir forms the third work. Last is a memoir fragment by Bevel's dying wife. VERDICT Both historical and postmodern, this novel gives readers the task of interpreting its multiple parts and narrators, making it an intriguing, stimulating read. Throughout, Diaz's stirring prose and unforgettable imagery shine through, notably in his poetic descriptions of high finance. He also holds a mirror up to the oligarchs of our own era, reflecting their greed and fragile egos. Highly recommended.—Reba Leiding

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Diaz returns after his Pulitzer finalist In the Distance with a wondrous portrait in four texts of devious financier Andrew Bevel, who survives the Wall Street crash of 1929 and becomes one of New York City's chief financial barons before dying a decade later at age 62. First there is Bonds, a novel by controversial writer Harold Vanner, which tells the story of Benjamin Rask, a character clearly based on Bevel. The novel, published shortly before Bevel's death, infuriates the magnate, particularly for its depiction of Bevel's deceased wife, Mildred, as a fragile madwoman. Bevel responds by undertaking a memoir, which only serves to highlight his own touchiness and lack of imagination. The third story-within-the-story is the most significant; in it, the reader meets Ida Partenza, daughter of an Italian anarchist in exile, who, in pursuit of her own writerly ambitions, suppresses both her own conscience and the suspicions of her suitor, Jack, to become Bevel's secretary and coconspirator in ruining Harold Vanner, as Ida concocts a counternarrative of a saintly Mildred. The reader eventually hears from Mildred directly via her journal, discovered by Ida during her research and included as a coda. The result is a kaleidoscope of capitalism run amok in the early 20th century, which also manages to deliver a biography of its irascible antihero and the many lives he disfigures during his rise to the cream of the city's crop. Grounded in history and formally ambitious, this succeeds on all fronts. Once again, Diaz makes the most of his formidable gifts. (May)