In Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar's impressive whirlwind of a second novel, the author turns his own phenomenally successful American story inside out, eloquently exposing fault lines that persist for those viewed as outsiders in their country of birth. The book takes the literary form of a reality drama, exploring the socio-economic upheavals that created Trump's America through the family saga of an American Muslim playwright of Pakistani ancestry. Through profoundly intimate vignettes, the narrator shares the distorted American dreams of a father who served as Trump's physician in the '90s and an uncle whose conversion to Christianity is a misguided effort to feel safe in the U.S.
Akhtar (American Dervish), staying true to the legacy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced, dissects themes of Muslim self-identity with incredible precision. Longlisted for the ALA's Andrew Carnegie Medal, Homeland Elegies will appeal to readers secure in their sense of belonging as well as those who, like Ayad, wrestle with feelings of otherness. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and reviewer