Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to his peers, his mother and himself. In the years that follow, István is borne along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he possibly could have imagined. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy.

A woman strikes up a conversation with the man sitting next to her on a plane after some turbulence. He returns home to tragic news that also has impacted another stranger, a shaken pilot on his way to another continent who seeks comfort from a journalist he meets that night. Her life shifts subtly as well, before she heads to the airport on an assignment that will shift more lives in turn. In TURBULENCE, David Szalay’s diverse protagonists circumnavigate the planet in 12 flights en route to see lovers or estranged siblings, aging parents, baby grandchildren or nobody at all. Along the way, they change each other in one brief, electrifying interaction after the next.