Latest news with #PakistaniAmerican
Business Recorder
23-05-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
Interview with Bill Faruki, Founder & CEO of MindHYVE.ai and DV8Infosystems: ‘MindHYVE was built on the principle of equalization'
Bill Faruki is a visionary Pakistani American entrepreneur and pioneer in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and agentic AI. With over 25 years of experience at the intersection of technology, artificial intelligence, and strategic transformation, he is the Founder and CEO of $1.7 billion company redefining how intelligent systems serve society. A trailblazer in swarm intelligence and autonomous agentic systems, Bill's innovations are driving scalable, ethical AI solutions in healthcare, education, and legal tech. He is also a vocal advocate for responsible AI and inclusive economic growth, aiming to empower individuals through equal access to transformative technology. Following are the edited excerpts of a recent conversation BR Research had with him: BR Research: Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to found MindHYVE? Bill Faruki: I'm a Pakistani American, born and raised in Karachi. I moved to the United States in 1991, and while I had a few corporate stints, I've been an entrepreneur most of my life, particularly in financial technology. Around four years ago, I shifted toward broader software domains, and about two and a half years ago, I founded MindHYVE AI. Initially, it started as an internal research lab called Hive Labs, where we explored different types of AI models. Today, MindHYVE is a $1.7 billion company with offices in California and Lahore, building a unique kind of AI. BRR: What exactly does MindHYVE do, and how does it tie into nation-building in Pakistan? BF: MindHYVE was built on the principle of equalization. We believe that with the right ethical deployment of AI, we can equalize access to healthcare, education, legal services, and more. In Pakistan, quality services are often restricted to urban and affluent areas. Our AI can deliver world-class services at scale and at low cost, even to the most remote areas. That's what I mean by nation-building—empowering every citizen through access to critical services. BRR:You mentioned plans to seed over 30 AI startups and create thousands of jobs. How does that support your equalization strategy? BF: Equalization isn't just about services; it's also about economic opportunity. While hiring 5,000 people won't move the national employment needle on its own, it sets a precedent. If our company can achieve 10x productivity through AI, others can too. We want to inspire the private sector to use AI to grow and hire. As for startups, I plan to provide capital, technical support, and mentorship to entrepreneurs so they can commercialize AI the right way—learning how to build, position, and sell products like we do in the U.S. BRR: Do you see enough talent in Pakistan to support this vision? BF: Absolutely. I've hired thousands of people in my career, and I look for what I call the X-factor: ethical, hardworking individuals with a hunger to grow. Pakistan is full of such people. Even with a broken education system, many Pakistanis have become self-taught, literate, and creative. With access to AI and training, we could have 20, 30, or even 40 million highly educated individuals. The raw talent is here. BRR: You're also working with organizations like IDC and Al-Khidmat Foundation. What do those partnerships look like? BF: With the Islamabad Diagnostic Center (IDC), we're integrating AI into radiology and pathology, starting at their Markaz Lab and scaling to 150 labs. Our AI will assist radiologists and pathologists in making faster and more accurate diagnoses. This dramatically increases their capacity and precision. We're also embedding AI into their information systems to automate diagnostics. The same technology will be rolled out to Al-Khidmat's 56 hospitals and medical universities like Dow, GIK, and King Edward, where students will learn AI usage from the ground up. In parallel, our Arthur AI rollout with Al-Khidmat will eventually benefit over 2 million Pakistanis through advanced AI-powered vocational training programs. BRR: You often talk about agentic intelligence. How is that different from traditional AI models? BF: Traditional AI focuses on large language models (LLMs), which generate text or answer questions. We build large reasoning models, which solve problems. Our agents—or digital employees like the digital doctor or lawyer—sit on top of these models. These agents can perform complex, multi-step tasks autonomously, with deep domain understanding. That's what makes our AI truly transformative. We were doing this before it became a trend. BRR:Tell us about your collaboration with Airlink on smart hubs and TVs. What should users expect? BF: We're building smart devices with Airlink to democratize access to education and healthcare. These tablets and TVs can run offline and be deployed in rural areas. A smart TV in a home could include a digital assistant that helps with nutrition, health, schedules, and even prayer times. Because our AI is self-learning and adaptive, it will understand and respond to each household's needs. This brings the power of AI directly into people's homes. BRR: You recently proposed an AI-driven tax compliance system to the Prime Minister. What was the reception? BF: During a meeting with PM Shehbaz Sharif and other tech leaders, I proposed using AI to address the estimated PKR 700 billion in annual tax evasion. AI could provide scalable, cost-effective enforcement. The idea was well received, though I haven't had a follow-up yet due to the current political situation. But I'm hopeful this conversation continues. BRR: You've announced a $22 million investment in Pakistan's AI ecosystem. Is this committed capital? BF:Yes, but not in one lump sum. This investment will be rolled out in phases as we build out verticals in healthcare, education, and legal tech. We start with strategic plans, hire core teams, and scale as KPIs are met. Once operations show results, we push more money in. This investment is just the beginning; it will unlock revenues from other markets and bring them back to Pakistan, potentially multiplying these many times over. BRR: Given all this, how do you view Pakistan's broader investment climate? BF: Pakistan doesn't have a good global salesperson right now. Many investors simply don't understand the country. Every nation has problems—look at U.S. history. What we lack is structured risk communication and literacy. We need to explain our opportunities and risks clearly, in the language investors understand, and provide digital ambassadors or AI agents who can represent Pakistan globally. With that kind of outreach, and the right narrative, investment will follow. BRR: Final thoughts for our readers? BF: I was genuinely surprised by Pakistan's infrastructure—from NASDP to our financial systems, it's world-class. We have the talent, energy, and vision. But now it's up to all of us—citizens, media, businesses—to support this momentum. If we don't use the systems in place, they'll wither like so many past initiatives. I'm investing in Pakistan because I believe in it. Now we need collective action to realize its full potential.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Bargain of Working Hard and Getting a Job Just Doesn't Hold Anymore
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In 2021, Zia graduated from the University of Michigan–Dearborn with a degree in software engineering. With an internship under his belt, he had no shortage of job opportunities, and he landed a contract coding gig in January of 2022. It was good work, for a year and a half, until he got laid off in mid-2023. After taking a month to figure out what he wanted to specialize in, Zia decided that he'd go for the types of app- and site-building jobs that had been so plentiful when he was in school. 'Then I started applying to jobs, and honestly, I don't even know what to say after that,' the now–29-year-old Pakistani American coder told me, calling from his parents' house in Taylor, Michigan. 'Here I am right now, still applying to jobs two years later.' (Zia is a pseudonym; I've granted them in this article to people who didn't feel like they could otherwise speak freely without disrupting their ongoing job searches.) Software engineering used to be a sure bet. 'Learn to code' is, after all, used as a pejorative against people in famously less stable fields, like journalism. But for the past few years, it hasn't seemed to matter whether you did everything 'right'—choosing the right major, getting the right experience, even spending decades in a field. Even after perfecting their résumés and sending out hundreds (if not thousands) of applications, people on the job market today, of all ages, in all fields, are finding that they can't even land an interview, forget about full-time employment. 'It's just barren out there,' said a 42-year-old New Yorker and longtime artificial intelligence product manager whom I'll call Dave. Yes—even the supposedly booming field of A.I. is not hiring so madly these days. 'I lost my job about a year ago at a company that had some issues, and I've put out so many applications,' he told me. LaVonne Pepe, a former senior adviser on gender-based violence at Housing and Urban Development, was laid off from the advocacy nonprofit Color of Change in 2023. 'I'd applied to literally hundreds of jobs, because the market was bad then,' she said. Pepe finally landed the job with HUD last fall—only to have her federal position terminated in February. Now she's back on the job market and 'it's arguably worse now,' she told me. 'Back then, more jobs were available in the field that I'm in. Now the funding landscape for those organizations is horrible.' On TikTok, a burly Gen Z New Yorker who goes by 'Rizz Carlton' earned outsize attention for a February video that he captioned, in part, 'I've sent over 1,500 applications and haven't gotten 1 offer in 2 years … even with a masters degree & internships.' Now, the caption continues, he's 'doing social media to pay the bills.' 'Unless you've been on a job search the last two years, you do not know how bad it is out here,' a Chicago-based techie named Syd wrote in the caption for a March TikTok that's racked up nearly 10 million views. 'The job market is trash, basura, it's been bad!' A 24-year-old Los Angeles–based writer, teacher, and comedian who goes by Femcel1836 began sharing dispatches from her 'job search hell' late last year before pouring out her frustrations in a January Substack essay titled 'WHY ARE THERE NO FUCKING JOBS?' That post went viral, garnering hundreds of comments from like-minded users. One bemoaned that she'd been 'suffering through this find a job shit for the past 2 years'; another called this a 'crisis' that was even 'more severe' than the 2008 recession—otherwise known as the worst financial meltdown of the 21st century. Even experienced workers share the perception that this is the worst job market of their lifetime. 'I've been laid off before,' Dave told me, sighing as he acknowledged that periods of looking for work are part of having a career. 'But it's never been this hard to just get interest on a résumé. Even during the Great Recession and COVID, there were fewer postings, but it was never this quiet.' If you're looking for a job right now, it might feel hard to convey people who are happily employed just how rough things are. That's because the topline numbers about the job market are, for all the chaos in America, pretty rosy. The federal jobs report for April shows that unemployment is historically, persistently low, that jobs are being added almost continuously, and that there are hundreds of thousands of openings waiting to be filled. Even the measured percentage of 'discouraged' and underemployed workers fell last month, as labor force participation increased overall. Take a peek beneath those numbers—which, notably, do not yet include many federal workers cut in the DOGE bloodbath who are still receiving severance—and things look more concerning. That's particularly true for zoomers who went into the very industries that once promised solid, plentiful opportunities. An April 11 report from the think tank Employ America pointed out 'the increasingly narrow scope of employment growth.' It found that job numbers have grown mainly in specific sectors, like private health care and education, along with local government. Meanwhile, tech, finance, and manufacturing have either slowed their new job offerings or shed opportunities altogether. The impacts of that penny pinching can be hardest on seniors (whose lengthy work experiences and accordingly high salary demands make them unattractive) and young people (who don't yet have much experience, and whom employers might not want to take on the burden of training). Recent college grads are currently facing an unemployment level that outpaces the national average: 5.8 percent vs. 4.2 percent. Last summer, Inside Higher Ed highlighted a report finding that 'more than half of bachelor's degree holders are underemployed a year after graduation.' The widespread economic uncertainty, mass government layoffs, and weakened growth all caused recently by the Trump administration don't help the picture. Indeed, it's only going to spur a more urgent crisis down the line. But the trouble felt today has been brewing for longer than that—since 2022, to be exact. That was the year COVID-era interest rates finally went up and kicked off the massive rounds of rolling tech layoffs that have persisted up through this year. (A few prominent examples from 2025 alone: a 5 percent workforce cut at Meta, 1,000 jobs lost at Salesforce, a 10 percent workforce reduction at Blue Origin, and 2,000 jobs axed at HP.) 'I know so many people who have been laid off from tech companies in the last year,' said Anna J. Rogers, a Bay Area–based science communicator who wrote for Slate about recently leaving her job with the National Institutes of Health. The first tech layoffs were the crash after a period of rapid pandemic-era hiring, remote-working flexibility, and low interest rates to rejuvenate the COVID-crashed economy. All of that spurred white-collar sectors to greatly expand—and, more importantly, this offered great flexibility to workers, who were able to switch jobs easily and negotiate better salaries. Then, interest rates went up, along with interest in revitalizing office attendance. White-collar executives pressed the brakes—not just on carefree spending, but on normal avenues of growth, like routine hiring and training for new roles. They also cut plenty of middle-management and human resources jobs, outsourcing many candidate-screening and hiring processes to automated software. Across industries, the number of private sector jobs added last month was the lowest we've seen in a year. Overall hiring rates are at their lowest level since the pre-COVID era. Daniel Zhao, lead economist at the employer-reviews site Glassdoor, shared a company study from November that noted how 'almost 2 in 3 professionals feel stuck in their careers' thanks to job-market jitters. 'Additionally, in Glassdoor reviews in January, mentions of layoffs, inflation and recession were all up as economic anxiety is on the rise,' Zhao wrote in an email. 'Employees are less confident in their ability to leave their jobs and find new ones, as evidenced by a low quit rate,' said Allison Shrivastava, an economist with the job board Indeed, in an email. 'Job postings in knowledge-based fields like IT, software, and banking are below pre-pandemic levels, declining after reaching a peak in 2022.' The job postings that are available can be frustrating, to say the least. 'It's like, We're looking for someone who's trained in marketing and can do sales and bookkeeping and basic accounting on Excel,' the Substack writer who goes by Femcel vented to me in a video conversation. 'OK, you actually should be hiring an accountant, a salesperson, and a marketer. But you want someone who's going to be a catchall for the random stuff in the office that needs to get done, and to pay one bad salary.' And sometimes, the jobs that have been listed don't really exist at all. A Resume Builder study from last summer found that 3 out of 10 online postings are 'ghosts,' meaning that the roles don't exist or employers don't actually plan to fill said roles. There are a few reasons companies go for such misleading postings, which have the added effect of making job-reports numbers seem rosier than they actually are. Maybe they're planning to hire for that position much further into the future, or they want shareholders to think they're growing at a healthy pace. 'The game is that these companies can say to investors, 'I know we have no profits yet, but we're trying to grow. We're trying to hire so badly,' ' said Dave. 'I fully believe that LinkedIn is mostly ghost listings.' Zia shares that feeling: 'Going through the job-applying process, I realized more and more that these companies, they're not really looking to hire,' he told me. 'These job boards are almost like a playground for them.' All of this has fueled a legitimate crisis of trust. Earlier this year, the background-check platform Checkr surveyed 3,000 active job-seekers from all age groups about the market and chronicled the results in a February research report. About two-thirds of respondents reported that they have fallen for ghost jobs; a similar percent of respondents believed that companies overall 'are not being honest about true hiring intentions.' In addition, nearly 60 percent of those surveyed stated that 'securing an interview or even a response through traditional job boards feels nearly impossible,' especially if they don't already have a personal connection at a particular company. 'The state of hiring in the U.S. is at a critical turning point—job-seekers are facing a lack of transparency, inconsistent communication, and hiring processes that feel increasingly disconnected from their needs,' Sam Radbil, a research strategist with Checkr, wrote in an email. The growing automation of HR means that fewer humans are involved in the hiring process, with A.I. taking on tasks like writing and sharing job descriptions, screening résumés, putting job-seekers on 'block lists,' and even conducting interviews—all of which can make the process of actually connecting with an employer incredibly vexing. And if you're still lucky enough to get through the interviews and finally land an offer, you might not be out of the woods yet. 'I got laid off early last year and was applying for at least 100 jobs a week,' said Jessica B. Davis, a career coach who currently works at S&P Global. 'But I was ending up in situations, like many others I knew, where I would get an offer and then they would retract it because I wanted to negotiate my salary.' The unfortunate fact remains: Budgets are tight. The job-seekers I talked to are getting through it as best they can, and making ends meet creatively while they're out of work. 'I'm part of a job-finding group,' said Dave. 'There's almost 100 of us, all tech and software executives from Boston to Houston to San Francisco, and we meet to review our résumés and chat about updates. Out of this group, one person found a job in the past year, and it was a junior role with much less money.' In the meantime, Dave told me, 'everybody's out doing a side job'—Uber, DoorDash, petsitting, tutoring, coffeemaking, you name it. Femcel now has an assistant gig with an extremely wealthy (and, as she chronicles on her Substack, extremely weird) famous Californian; Zia helps local businesses with web design and, as an astrology enthusiast, has found some paid gigs consulting with fellow believers. Anna J. Rogers also landed a 'small contract role that's not even going to pay rent,' because 'I needed something.' None of this is sustainable in a time when the cost of living remains high, and when safety-net benefits are in danger from federal budget cuts. It also puts another lie to the image of America as land of opportunity. After the fallout from the Great Recession, when interest rates were low and companies began hiring rabidly, a typical line of advice was offered to America's youth: Study a buzzy field in college, get early career experience while there, refine your credentials, and earn that degree—then, you'll be guaranteed a comfortable, well-paying job with employers who feel lucky to have you. Or at least you'll be able to pay for the basics and have a family in exchange for hard work. That promise has been, once again, deflating, even if it hasn't fully collapsed … yet. The erratic economic policy from this administration has left countless employers petrified, unsure whether they should slash more spending now or hold expenses flat; no one's currently betting that things will look better anytime soon. We're stuck in anticipatory pre-recession mode, and what's coming next may not be so flush for any of us.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Consider this: ‘Deli Boys' star Asif Ali deserves to bring some South Asian flavor to the Comedy Supporting Actor Emmy race
It's Emmy season again, which means we'll see a bunch of new shows and breakthrough performers jostling for attention alongside returning Emmy favorites in the crowd of prestige television and streaming content. Chief among this season's freshman class is Deli Boys, starring actor-comedian Asif Ali, Saagar Shaikh (Ms. Marvel), and Poorna Jaganathan (Never Have I Ever). In Hulu's dark comedy series — or as showrunner Michelle Nader calls it, a 'crimedy' — focusing on a Pakistani American family, Ali plays Mir, who, along with brother Raj (Shaikh), is thrown into the criminal underworld after discovering his late father's deli empire was a front for drug-trafficking. The series helps redefine the typical stereotypes and gives South Asian and American Muslim actors an opportunity to play roles with depth, outside the common cab driver, terrorist, or doctor roles. According to Ali, the show deviates from the "model minority" stereotype, offering a more nuanced representation of South Asian characters on television. The actor's compelling performance captures Mir's transformation from dutiful son to a reluctant participant in crime, deftly switching between comedic and dramatic moments with finesse. More from GoldDerby 'Buena Vista Social Club' director Saheem Ali and writer Marco Ramirez on creating 'a joyful experience' out of the 'beautiful' Cuban record 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' eyes record-breaking $50 million opening as the Weeknd and Jenna Ortega fizzle in 'Hurry Up Tomorrow' 'Forever' star Michael Cooper Jr. admits he was 'petrified' going into his first big acting gig Ali is being submitted for Best Comedy Supporting Actor, with Shaikh as Best Comedy Actor, and Jaganathan for Best Comedy Supporting Actress. According to Gold Derby's odds in that race, Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear) and Harrison Ford (Shrinking) are out in front with the best odds, with a bunch of contenders jockeying for the remaining five spots. Based on recent history, we often see fresh faces in this category, like Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso) in 2022 and Lionel Boyce (The Bear) in 2024. Ali has risen seven slots in the Gold Derby odds over the past month, but still sits on the outside at No. 33 overall. But with Deli Boys' critical and commercial success, his standout performance deserves voters' attention. Hulu Ali, who was named one of Variety's Top 10 Comedians to Watch last year, brings his comedic timing to the character seamlessly. And while he has played several characters, from Don't Worry Darling to Marvel's WandaVision before, this is where we should give him his flowers as he really made Mir his own. His comedic background is evident in his role of Mir Dar where he brings his natural flair for humor to the type-A character of Mir. Ali initially auditioned for the role of Raj, since he felt more like him in real life, but playing Mir let him tap into someone with bottled-up energy and a lot going on under the surface. Ali's work represents understanding of timing, tone, and emotional nuance. He delivers a quick witted joke in one moment, and then reveals the deeper emotional layers of Mir in a subtle way, in the next. The series is a hit with critics, with Collider's Tania Hussain highlighting the show's "colorfully grounded performances" and "sharp, focused story and humor" and noting that Ali and Shaikh "slip into the sibling dynamic perfectly while bringing depth and dimension to their shared goofball adventures." Laura Zornosa of the Los Angeles Times emphasized how Deli Boys "flips the script" on traditional South Asian stereotypes. It is something that Ali is deeply proud of, telling the newspaper that the Deli Boys team "made something that pushes us forward ... expanding the bounds of what people that look like us can be in.' The show has a 96 percent 'fresh' rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Ali's ability to balance humor with the complexities of identity and familial expectations has clearly resonated. Per The Hollywood Reporter review, 'Ali is cast well enough as the uptight half, and Shaikh is oddly endearing as the type of dude who unironically describes his role as being 'the vibes guy.'' Time, meanwhile, notes, 'Charismatic slacker Raj and uptight striver Mir aren't just foils for each other; their mutual love is unmistakable, which gives weight to the looming prospect that the stress of salvaging Baba's empire could tear them apart.' Ali offers a fresh perspective on the immigrant experience, blending cultural specificity with universal themes. The show is littered with moments like one of the highlights when Mir is dealing with the inner battle of finding his individuality to make his father proud as he tries to navigate an unexpected FBI raid at the company after his father's death. There are moments with his brother Raj, where he is trying to understand the workings of it all, but trying to be a "good person" or dealing with the fact that the love of his life is leaves him. Can Ali bag a nomination? It's a possibility, if voters see the show — and it would end the dry spell since 2021, when the TV Academy last nominated a South Asian man in Best Comedy Supporting Actor, Aziz Ansari for Master of None. Ali's ability to shift between tension and humor, without breaking the flow of the character speaks to his skill-not only as a comedian, but as a versatile actor who understands the emotional beats of a scene and knows exactly when to lean in or pull back. As he's able to broaden the scope of his roles, a nomination could be a redefining moment in his career. Deli Boys is streaming on Hulu. Best of GoldDerby Making of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' panel: Bringing the Balrog to life was 'like doing a slight of hand card trick' TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games Click here to read the full article.
Time of India
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
US-based Ghulam Nabi Fai declared proclaimed offender in UAPA case by Kashmir NIA court, asked to surrender in 30 days
SRINAGAR: Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary general of Washington D.C.-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum, was declared a proclaimed offender (PO) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, by a NIA court in Kashmir on Thursday. The special judge of Budgam NIA court directed Kashmir-born Fai to surrender before J&K Police within 30 days. Earlier, police told the court that Fai, 77, a native of Wadwan in Budgam and now a US citizen, has failed to appear before it in the UAPA case even after warrants were issued against him. Police said he is wanted in a case registered in Budgam under UAPA sections 10, 13, and 39, which relate to membership of unlawful associations, involvement in unlawful activities, and support to a banned terrorist organisation, respectively. Police said Fai is 'concealing himself in the US', and has 'persistently evaded arrest, obstructing the legal process and avoiding accountability under the law'. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 2025 Top Trending local enterprise accounting software Esseps Learn More Undo On July 19, 2011 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested Fai, along with a Pakistani American, Zaheer Ahmad. They were charged with falsifying, concealing and covering up material facts as they lobbied with US govt without disclosing that they were being funded by Pakistan govt, including its spy agency ISI. On Dec 7, 2011, a statement by the US department of justice said Fai had 'pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax violations in connection with a decades-long scheme to conceal the transfer of at least $3.5 million from the govt of Pakistan to fund his lobbying efforts in America related to Kashmir'. The statement further said: 'Fai served as the director of the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), a non-governmental organisation in Washington, D.C., that held itself out to be run by Kashmiris, financed by Americans and dedicated to raising the level of knowledge in the United States about the struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination. But according to court documents, KAC was secretly funded by officials employed by the govt of Pakistan, including the ISI directorate.' In March 2012, a US court sentenced him to two years in prison for a 'conspiracy to defraud the US'. However, in Nov 2013 he was released by the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, as the court reduced his sentence to 16 months.
New York Times
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Craving More of ‘The White Lotus'? Read These Books Next
Smart, funny and compulsively watchable, HBO's 'The White Lotus' is the rare TV satire that strikes a perfect balance between vicious and empathetic, skewering the superrich while also humanizing their often outlandish foibles. The series, which just wrapped up its third season, follows a formula that's as familiar as it is addictive: A flock of wealthy, ill-mannered tourists descends on a far-flung luxury resort for one week, dreaming of escape — only to find that the very problems they hoped to flee are swiftly and mercilessly closing in on them, with deadly consequences. Part of the pleasure of the show is how it manages to make these doomed holidays seem so appealing. Lives implode, relationships crumble and people wind up dead, but you still want to be there regardless. If you're not quite ready to check out of the White Lotus, we've got 10 novels that channel the spirit of the show, from ruthless depictions of moneyed vacationers to murder mysteries set at high-end resorts. If you want to open on a dead body Kismet Much like the White Lotus in Thailand, Sedona, Ariz., has a reputation for spirituality that attracts all manner of gurus, yogis and so-called wellness aficionados. Their pretensions are witheringly lampooned in this comic thriller about Ronnie, a Pakistani American who tags along to the desert enclave with her friend turned life coach, Marley. It isn't long before the dark side of paradise reveals itself, in the form of a dead body — the first of many that soon turn up in various states of dismemberment. Akhtar has a keen eye for the hypocrisy of the namaste-espousing elite, and no vampire facial, jar of manuka honey or hot yoga session is spared from her mordantly funny wit. The Hunting Party Flitting between the past and present, this mystery novel is more than a mere whodunit: Although the story begins with a murder, Foley conceals the identity of the victim, describing the body in vague terms before rewinding to the start of the week. The cast of this locked-room drama comprises nine 30-something friends from Oxford University who have assembled at a remote hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year's Eve party. When a raging blizzard traps the group inside, secrets, lies and betrayals all bubble to the surface, and the question of who will die — and who will do the killing — becomes more and more intriguing. Bad Summer People In Rosenblum's Salcombe, a fictional summer getaway for the rich in the heart of Fire Island, the tennis pros steal, the loving wives lie, and everybody bad mouths, screws over and sleeps with everyone else — sometimes all at the same time. Rosenblum charts the intricate rivalries and obsessions ping-ponging around this cloistered idyll with an anthropologist's rigor, tracing in sharp detail how this complex web of relationships could escalate from affairs to larceny and all the way to murder. If you like the rich behaving badly Long Island Compromise Carl Fletcher, a second-generation immigrant and the owner of a polystyrene factory, is kidnapped one morning, in broad daylight, outside his Long Island home. He's eventually returned in one piece, but the trauma — which he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge — has repercussions that last decades, looming over the lives of his three children as they clumsily transition into adulthood. Like 'The White Lotus,' this novel by Brodesser-Akner, a writer for The New York Times Magazine, is in part about how money doesn't solve your problems, just reconfigures them — and about how even the most dogged efforts to preserve a veneer of normality and stave off a breakdown are doomed to fail. I Eat Men Like Air Alex Sable is the kind of 20-something patrician in the making who is attuned to the subtlest gradations of class — a billionaire's scion who knows in an instant whose blazer is from J. Crew, and who'd rather be caught dead than in something other than Brunello Cucinelli. As the novel opens, Alex is himself caught dead, found in the bathtub of a New Hampshire mansion with his wrists slashed and his Patek Philippe watch broken. Berman flashes back through the lavish bacchanalia of Alex's last months, through the eyes of a podcaster trying to unravel the mystery of his death, to reveal the knotty story behind the apparent suicide. Memento Mori Few writers were as capable of scalpel-sharp dissection of the rich as the Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, whose magisterial social satires remain relevant even half a century later. 'Memento Mori,' one of her most assiduous, tells the story of a group of well-to-do Britons who are thrown into an existential crisis by a series of threatening phone calls, which could be a criminal conspiracy, a prank or the literal embodiment of death. (In typical Spark fashion, it's probably a combination of all three.) The characters are petty, duplicitous, conniving — and also, somehow, strangely sympathetic. It's an acidly funny book that's as smart as they come. If you want a far-flung locale Tangerine It's 1956 in Tangier, Morocco, and Alice Shipley, a housewife struggling to find herself, is sucked into a twisted whirlwind when Lucy Mason, her enigmatic college roommate, unexpectedly shows up at her door. The book's sun-kissed setting and atmosphere of diaphanous unease are reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, and there's a trace of 'The Golden Notebook' in Mangan's canny rendering of incipient feminism in the aftermath of World War II. But as the novel gains violent momentum, the tension that takes hold is pure 'White Lotus.' Havoc The premise seems charming: Maggie Burkhardt, an 81-year-old widow taking up semi-permanent residence at a palatial hotel in Luxor, Egypt, passes her time during the tail end of the Covid lockdowns by attempting to 'liberate' unhappy couples with a bit of meddling. Her mischief takes a dark turn, however, when she makes an unlikely nemesis: an 8-year-old boy named Otto, whom she engages in a cat-and-mouse game too irresistibly diabolical to spoil. Bollen's storytelling more than matches 'The White Lotus' for I-can't-believe-they-just-went-there nerve, and when it's not outright shocking, it's outrageously, scandalously delightful. Death on the Nile Long before Mike White set his murderers loose among the superrich, Agatha Christie made a career of it — staging one locked-room mystery after another in exotic locales around the globe and rounding out their ensembles with tycoons, socialites and other members of the upper crust. One of her best-known and most beloved novels in this mode, and probably the closest cousin to 'The White Lotus,' is 'Death on the Nile,' which finds the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot sussing out clues among vacationers on a luxury river cruise that turns deadly. If you want to stay with the Thai theme The Resort Scuba divers, influencers and hard-partying tourists converge on the glamorous Koh Sang Resort in this sleek holiday thriller. There's an unspoken rule among Koh Sang's community of expats, known as the Permanents, not to pry into anybody's past. But when dead bodies start turning up on the Thai island, it becomes clear that some of the residents' pasts aren't done with them. Ochs draws out the lush details of the idyllic environment, and even as the body count steadily rises, the island remains strangely appealing.
