'He Understood Money More Than He Did People:' Read an Excerpt from “Entitlement ”by Rumaan Alam (Exclusive)

The novel, which follows a young woman working for an octogenarian billionaire, raises questions about generosity, greed, privilege and race

In May, author Rumaan Alam launched his new book at the tony auction house and showroom Christie's New York. Guests wandered the exhibits with flutes of champagne in hand, musing over the commercial value of art, squinting at price tags higher than at least one attendees' annual salary.

And once those in attendance got home, shucked off their heels and evening wear and dove into their copies of Entitlement (out Sept. 17 from Riverhead Books), the party's setting made even more sense.

The book, reviewed in this week's PEOPLE print edition, follows a young woman named Brooke looking for her place in the world. When she takes a job working for billionaire Asher Jaffee, she finds more than employment. It raises questions of race and privilege, generosity and greed, philanthropy and who deserves it — or doesn't.

Read an exclusive excerpt below.

For PEOPLE's review of Entitlement, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

In his 1998 memoir, Asher Jaffee alleged that the high of working around the clock meant more to him than the product of that labor, the millions. He wrote that it was a kind of addiction; he wrote that it was a rush; he wrote that it destroyed his marriage. This wasn’t accurate (Barbara loved the money) but it had the sound of wisdom. Anyway, anyone reading a business memoir didn’t see this as cautionary tale. They recognized themselves. They, too, claimed that the high was the objective. A lie! It was the money. Of course it was. No one at the foundation (not even Natalie) had read Asher Jaffee’s memoir. Asher still sought a high. 

But he had made concessions, like a four-day workweek (Carol loved him more than the money). Thus, almost half his time he was mostly housebound in Connecticut. Sometimes, a small do as Carol called these evenings of shrimp cocktail, sparkling wine and small talk, but mostly there were just the three hounds — Asher called them, collectively, Cerberus — for company. Weather permitting but even in the occasional, rejuvenating drizzle, in wellies and hunting jackets like English gentry, Asher and Carol would tramp the grounds with the trio of dogs manic over every deer or rabbit.

The Sunday Times in disarray on the solarium’s rattan tables, husband and wife read in the silence that could be sustained when so long married. They’d put on a spy thriller or one of the weepers to which Carol was partial and Marina would make kale chips and popcorn and seltzers with fresh-squeezed juice. They diverted themselves, poking around the bookstore, eating crumbly muffins at Starbucks, touring the museum they had helped underwrite, which hoped Asher and Carol Jaffee might someday leave them their Warhol Liz.

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Every so often, Asher would swallow a potent pill, a marvel the size of a peppercorn, give it 30 minutes, and they’d lie together, awash in the fantasy that he was young again. He enjoyed all this f---ing around, he enjoyed the f---ing, but privately Asher dreaded these weekends, which perennially had that noncommittal mood he associated, from his schooldays, with Sunday.

The office was the place where things happened, the place where he was necessary, the site of his every victory. The foundation’s dingy rooms were nothing like the long-gone Jaffee Corporation’s home: 16 floors — half the place! — of a Midtown tower: smoky glass, shiny chrome a dose of grandeur. That was the point. Where the glamour of the old HQ had affirmed that enterprise’s ambition, the shabbiness of this current office suggested virtue. It smelled of shampoo with a hint of pear, perfume over sweat, the heady bouquet of women’s bodies.

Even that bad lighting put him in the mood to focus. His relationship to his employees in the office was quite different from whatever governed the interactions with his domestic staff. In the office, he could waylay, tell stories, ask questions. He could expect the women in his employ to divulge weekend plans, restaurant reviews, spousal news, their various wonderful adventures out in the world. Asher was cosseted and hated this about himself. Too rich, too old. He missed the friction of real life. How he treasured his ladies! None more so than Natalie, for the care she took, arranging every day as she knew he liked: milky coffee at the ready, mysteriously always hot as though Natalie could outsmart the laws of physics, and a succession of calls, meetings, meals, dealings.

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He was at his most content when being told by her that he was needed. What would he do without her, more loyal than any of his three dogs? That was one of the questions of his old age best ignored. They never broached the subject of her retirement (that word, ugh). Just then, he could sense her, steps away, reassuring presence, making bearable the conference call to which he was only half paying attention.

Then, another voice. “Sorry to bother you but I wondered if I could have five minutes?” Natalie’s standard reply: “I’m so sorry, Brooke, I don’t have Mr. Jaffee this morning.” Have him. Halve him, put both Ashers to work. If only. Asher was touched by how she protected him. He yelled out, disobedient. “What are you talking about? I’m right here!” “Mr. Jaffee, you’re due at the Ford Foundation in 20 minutes.” Natalie could be stern when she needed to be. She hovered in the door, finger outstretched, like a witch, like a mommy. “Christopher is downstairs.” 

“I’m done, gentlemen.” He ended the call — something to do with the parcels of real estate Jaffee Corp. still held across the country — without a farewell to the lawyers and middlemen. He paid them; he didn’t have to be nice to those people. “He can wait. They can wait. Brooke, come in, come in.” Natalie moved aside. “Sit.” He put his hands on the edge of the desk and rolled himself back into what he had determined was his listening position. The office wasn’t much — an old table for a desk, a chair on casters, a Barcelona lounge, some bentwood chairs — but there was a massive Philip Guston oil on the wall behind him. The point was that Asher’s confidence was entirely concentrated in his person. The room where he did his work had nothing to do with anything.

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“If you’re heading to a meeting —” Brooke was determined not to be flustered. “Always some meeting.” Asher cherished his reputation as a leader — fearless but approachable. “What can I do?” Ramrod posture and a determined mien.

 “There’s something I’d love to discuss, it won’t take long.” “A nice thing about being me is that I’m the most essential part of the meetings I take. Unless it’s the Oval Office. Been there a few times. In that room, you truly are not a very important person, or I wasn’t. But the Ford Foundation? I can be late.” He was bragging. He hoped to impress. The reason he was going to the Ford Foundation rather than have them send emissaries; this office would not awe that lot.

She produced an envelope from her pocket. “I was wondering whether you sent this to me.” This wasn’t what she’d rehearsed saying, knowing that he had sent it to her. A grin. “Yes, of course. You see my name there.” The woman was stoic! “I wondered why my employer would have sent me a check that’s not my paycheck.” She had settled on this language, on this distinction. She could accept her boss’s money as a wage but not a present, as from some kindly uncle. “Your employer didn’t send that. Your employer is the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation.” 

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He had this figured out. “That check is from me. Personal.”

"I’m not sure I understand.”

This seemed a noncommittal way of forcing him to explain. What had he meant by this? “Think of it as a debt paid, if you would.” Had he insulted her? He meant it as the opposite. It was a bid for her—was the word affection?

“I never took you to lunch.”

“I’m not sure what to say. But you did take me to lunch.”

It was no longer clear to Brooke the principle for which she was making a stand. “There’s nothing to say! It’s a gesture. Enjoy it. Indulge me.”

“It doesn’t seem — ethical.” She put the envelope on his desk.

“Come on, now.” Young people today seemed determined to take offense. They loved it. They cherished their own umbrage. “This is my way of saying — it’s an apology, if you prefer to think of it that way.” “

There’s no need.” These were the reflexive good manners that had been bred into her. Brooke almost felt sorry for the man. He understood money more than he did people.

From ENTITLEMENT by Rumaan Alam. Published by arrangement with Riverhead, a member of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Rumaan Alam, 2024.

Entitlement by Rumaan Alam is out Sept. 17 and available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.

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