Catfishing Caitlyn

Caitlyn is an intelligent young woman who just finished her Ph.D. in Middle Eastern history at Yale University. She has a voracious appetite for knowledge, women, and challenges. Not particularly looking for a job, she prefers to do post-doctoral studies, which the university rejects. She receives a cryptic message offering astounding cash rewards for solving obscure puzzles in her area of expertise. One wrong answer, and she's out of the game. Intrigued, Caitlyn searches for the answers and journeys from Jerusalem, Tibet, and the Middle East as she followsthe clues found in historical archives. Together with her best friend Benji, shealso travels to London and Turkey. Caitlyn soon faces her traumatic past, and the game suddenly becomes a quest to know who is behind the intriguing game and why.

Welcome to the game, Caitlyn. Password required. Hint: If you're not smart enough to guess the password, you're not smart enough to play. Gifted with an extraordinary mind, a ravenous appetite for knowledge, food, and women, Caitlyn thrives on challenges. Despite having just finished a highly specialized PhD in Middle Eastern History, with an impressive array of potential careers ahead of her – from intelligence agencies to Ivy League posts – Caitlyn finds herself spiraling, unable to make her next move. She is at a loss, suspended on a precipice of uncertainty, a feeling reminiscent only of being abandoned by her mother many years ago. But then, in her last hours as a student at Yale, she receives a mysterious invitation. One she cannot refuse. Selected by a panel of twelve of the world's greatest minds in her field, Caitlyn is invited to play a game – a unique contest of knowledge based on a series of expertly crafted questions. The stakes? Incredible rewards or instant elimination. The search for answers takes Caitlyn on a journey from Jerusalem to Tibet, Arabia to Mesopotamia, Christie's auction house in London to the Four Seasons hotel in Istanbul. But, as she continues to follow the clues and her investigation into historical archives deepens, she is unexpectedly pulled further into the mystery of her own traumatic past. The challenge of winning the game quickly escalates into a mission of uncovering who, or what, is asking the questions, and why.

Omar Imady is an uncommon collection of many things – poet, historian, novelist, Syrian, American, exile, Sufi, 'Alan Wattsian', cat lover, avid coffee drinker, insatiable gastronome – all of which find expression in his growing repertoire of eclectic fiction. He is the author of multiple books, including The Gospel of Damascus, a 2012 Book of the Year Award finalist, and When Her Hand Moves, a collection of three controversial, thought-provoking novellas and The Celeste Experiment, a 2023 Literary Titan Book Award winner. His forthcoming novels dig ever deeper into the human experience of alienation and the quest for meaning in a world increasingly hostile to answers.