Homeland Elegies - Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies

By Ayad Akhtar

  • Release Date: 2020-09-15
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 265 Ratings

Description

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

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 Year

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020

Finalist for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A Best Book of 2020 * Washington Post * O Magazine * New York Times Book Review * Publishers Weekly

Reviews

  • American Elegies

    5
    By Lefty Marion
    Great read, especially his take on turning us all into consumers instead of citizens, and stripping away small business owners on Main Streets everywhere in favor of the cheaper megastore controlled by the 1% instead. That same push fuels racism and white supremacy and makes the urban/rural divide even greater. This book can help to fuel the fight against white supremacy and corporate control.
  • Guess it’s good for masochists

    2
    By suebemd
    The new tradition of pummeling America at its best. Perhaps if the author had the courage to present this book as autobiographical rather than coyly hiding behind the guise of fiction. I think, however, most readers see through it. Narcissistic, destructive and, ultimately, cowardly.
  • Excellent

    5
    By juliusa
    An important and moving book. Read it.