Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar
Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar
7 Rating(s)
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Homeland Elegies
A Novel

Author: Ayad Akhtar

Narrator: Ayad Akhtar

Unabridged: 10 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/15/2020

Synopsis

This "profound and provocative" work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and American Dervish followsan immigrant father and his son as they search for belonging—in post-Trump America, and with each other (Kirkus Reviews). "Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable." —Salman Rushdie
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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. One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the YearOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020Finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionA Best Book of 2020 * Washington Post * O Magazine * New York Times Book Review * Publishers Weekly

About Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar is a playwright, novelist, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of AMERICAN DERVISH, published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. His plays include Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination) 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on September 17, 2020

Have you heard about Homeland Elegies yet? The author, Ayad Akhtar, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author already, and he deserves another. While the book is fiction, it is inspired by the author’s own story. It’s a book about finding cultural identity in the US, especially post 9/11. It’s about family......more

Goodreads review by Ron on August 31, 2020

The challenge of remembering one’s identity in a racist culture is also at the heart of Ayad Akhtar’s remarkable new book, “Homeland Elegies.” But here, Akhtar bounds far beyond the cleverly engineered drama of “Disgraced.” With its sprawling vision of contemporary America, “Homeland Elegies” is a p......more

Goodreads review by Malia on February 04, 2021

The hype is justified! I was hesitant to read this for a while there, because so many lauded books were disappointing to me last year, but I am happy to report, this one lived up to high expectations. I had heard about it ages ago, when the author was a guest on a podcast, and he was so eloquent and......more

Goodreads review by Justin on June 17, 2021

Homeland Elegies (2020) is a "novel" that seems to riff off the 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Both books succeed at offering family anecdotes to reveal something about the American political experience. With Hillbilly we got a view into Appalachian values that offered some unique case studies for und......more

Quotes

"An unflinchingly honest self-portrait by a brilliant Muslim-American writer, and, beyond that, an unsparing examination of both sides of that fraught hyphenated reality. Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable."—Salman Rushdie

"An urgent, intimate hybrid of memoir and fiction, Homeland Elegies thrusts us into the heart of a father-son relationship and, in the process-improbably-does nothing short of laying bare the broken heart of our American dream turned reality TV nightmare. The book's dissection of the deeply human desire to aspire and dream, and its illumination of the quest for success, brilliantly captures how we got to this exact moment in time and at what cost. Stunning."—A. M. Homes, author of This Book Will Save Your Life and Days of Awe

"At the core of this flashing, kinetic coil of a story -- part 1001 Nights, part Reality TV -- is a passionate, wrenching portrayal of Americans exiled into 'otherness'."—Jennifer Egan, author of Manhattan Beach and A Visit From the Goon Squad

"With Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar has found the perfect hybrid form for his exuberant, insightful, and wickedly entertaining epic about Muslim immigrants and their American-born children. A deeply moving father-and-son story unfolds against tumultuous current events in a book that anyone wanting to know how we as a nation got where we are today -- and into what dark wood we might be heading tomorrow -- should read."—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend

"Homeland Elegies is the astonishing work of an absolutely brilliant writer. With exquisite prose and lacerating honesty, Ayad Akhtar reveals the intersections of art, finance, race, religion, academia, and empire, and in the process, shows us a troubled reflection of our country in the twenty-first century."—Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

"A triumph. Akhtar rages, he sings, he indicts, he falls in love, he sorrows, he dreams, he mourns, he transcribes!-and finally, he transmutes injustice into the sublimest art."—Joshua Ferris, author of The Dinner Party and Then We Came to the End

"Ayad Akhtar offers up his heart and life with an honesty that astonishes. Never have I experienced such a reading thrill. I put down this novel trembling at the courage it took to write it, and determined to be a better American for having read it."—Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"Homeland Elegies is urgent, lacerating writing of the first order from one of our finest playwrights. A sensation of a book."—Suketu Mehta, author of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto and Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

"A beautifully rendered account of the struggle to belong in America today, Homeland Elegies takes you into the very heart of hyphenated identity. Erudite and vivid, its pages burst with vitality and intelligence."—Peter Godwin, author of When a Crocodile Eats the Sun and The Fear

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