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This is Rebecca Lo or Rebecca Loa if you listen to suboptimal radio and you are listening to Men in Blazers on the NBC Sports Network.

Welcome to Men in Blazers, pod special.

With a remarkable gent, one of my favourite novelists of the modern era.

But if ever a bloat was more than just your run of the mill, internationally acclaimed the ward winning best selling author, it's he.

A polymath who learnt to write under the tutelage of Joyce Carol Oates and Tony Morrison, yet elected to become a corporate lawyer and perhaps worse, a management consultant before saving himself and his adoring readers by finding his feet as a writer further proof that many of my favourite people in life are lawyers who leave the law.

He's also roamed around the globe, living between California, London, New York and Lahore and perhaps because of that his novels often centre upon outsider characters whose life arcs he portrays with deliciously crafted writing, the ability to hook you with a rollicking yarn and then deliver a deeply emotional punch that you never see coming.

First book I read of his was How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Stop listening to this, just buy it, read it now.

It's a scintillating mock self-help book charting an unnamed man's rags to riches as a scent from rural peasant like me and DVD delivery boy to corporate tycoon like Davo in a country that's vaguely Pakistan.

His latest novel Exit West, it's a phenomenal work, a taught poetic magical tale, set emits the themes of conflict, refugees, globalisation, populism, anxiety and travel bans, on the eve of Tuesday's announcement of the man book of prize, the literary world champions league, for which his book is one of six nominees, we welcome to the Panic Room.

Mr. Moose in Hamid. Thank you. Wow, that was exhausting. What an introduction.

You paint off people, they're very good, they wrote it for me, but I've got to congratulate you on the success of Exit West and the book of prize, Brue Herr Herr.

Have you got your suit game ready? Are you at Donald Glover level?

I've had a show one he's stitched, so it's a black tie, which means you can come in national dress. Yes, so I'm wearing this long.

Imagine a narrow jacket meets the matrix, that's what I'm wearing. Oh God, that's just Tuesday night at my house. What color? Black. Why are they hosting the book of prize? Just give this man the award right now.

I want to start by giving my listeners a sense of your career journey, your life journey. I've got to admit I'm fascinated by it, you are an interstitial man.

Professionally, you started off as a corporate lawyer, which you, Shock Horror, found boring. You became a management consultant, McKinsey, while writing on the side in your mid-20s.

At the time, did you do the cubicle thing yearning to be a writer, or did it just naturally emerge like a space shuttle pulling away from its solid booster rocket?

I had a very small jet pack, you know, strapped to me, which is this writing, which I didn't think would get me a loft very honestly.

I thought, you can't make a living doing this stuff. So I wanted to be a writer, I just didn't imagine you could do it for a living.

And I finished law school with $100,000 in debt, and I needed to pay that off. And so I took a job, I was working as a consultant in New York and later London.

To be honest, I learned a lot, it was a great time. It wasn't that, you know, I look back and say, what a mistake. It was fantastic. I got to live in New York City. I got to learn about the world.

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