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Staff Pick
Simply put: this is the best novel I read in 2020. It belongs on any list of great literature that examines the full scope of the American experience. Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com
Homeland Elegies delves powerfully into the experiences of Muslim Americans, delivering a scathing portrait of America as a pecuniary hell devoid of the compassion or imagination necessary to achieve multiracial equality. It is also an intimate work of autofiction, and Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar hides little in his exploration of his parents’ marriage and flaws and of his own uneasy relationship with his Pakistani and American identities. Not an easy book to read, but a very compelling and well-written one, Homeland Elegies is a sharp reminder of the role 9/11 plays as both the end-result of American actions abroad and the start of our steep, continuous slide into a country increasingly defined by anxiety and division. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A deeply personal work about
identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland
Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and
dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part
social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a
father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in
which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule,
where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds
wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all
through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in
America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in
the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one — least of all himself — in the process.
Review
"Akhtar confronts issues of
race, money, family, politics, and sexuality in a bold, memoiristic tale...with an array of fascinating characters with different insights
into the American character" Booklist
Review
"A searing work...profound and provocative." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This tragicomedy is a revelation." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Ayad Akhtar is a
novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in
over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters.
Ayad is the author of
American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), published in over 20 languages and named a
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012, as well as the forthcoming novel,
Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.) in September 2020. As a playwright, he has written
Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination);
Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination);
The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and
The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John
Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a
screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best
Screenplay for
The War Within.
Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg
Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award, as
well as fellowships from the American Academy in Rome, MacDowell, the
Sundance Institute, and Yaddo, where he serves as a Board Director.
Additionally, Ayad is a Board Trustee at PEN/America and New York
Theatre Workshop. He lives in New York City.