AYAD AKHTAR, a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright and the author of the acclaimed 2012 novel American Dervish, has written an immigrant saga unlike any other. Discarding the traditional fresh-off-the-boat three acts (we left, we suffered, I returned to my native country and tried to learn the language), Akhtar folds time and space to produce a mesmerizing portrait of a Muslim Pakistani family coming into its own in Wisconsin during the hard years between the Iran hostage crisis and the Trump presidency. Of course, 9/11 casts a long shadow, that terrible day that “foreclosed our futures in this country for at least another generation.”
Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown) is singular in its richness, inventiveness, and braininess and the fiery candor with which Akhtar chars nearly every sentence. It speaks to his gifts that…
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O, The Oprah (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2020