Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
4.15
· 26 ratings · 369 pages · Published: 15 Sep 2020
Homeland Elegies is an astonishing and deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams. Drawn from Akhtar's life as the son of Muslim immigrants, it blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure -- at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a nation in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to 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 Davos to guerilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan. All the while, he spares no one -- neither himself, nor his loved ones, nor his fellow Americans -- any indignity in order to make better sense of it all.
Tagged as:
- historical 3
- historical fiction 3
- political 3
- literary fiction 3
- social commentary 3
- family 2
- religion 2
- protagonists of colour 2
- islam 2
- drama 2
- realistic 1
- city/urban 1
- spirituality 1
- Add topics
- format - reader age
- audiobook 3
- book 1
- adult fiction 1
- content warnings
- racism 1