Homeland Elegien

Many factors came together that sparked in Ayad Akhtar the desire to remember. His mother had passed away, his father's life was increasingly falling apart, much like the world seemed to be falling apart when the highest office in the United States was occupied by a questionable businessman with questionable values. Homeland Elegies is an autofictional novel about a Pakistani immigrant family, the experiences of Muslims living in the West after 9/11, and the question of the possibility of a Western Muslim identity. But it is also a brilliant dissection of contemporary American society, its promises, its myths, and its self-deceptions, written by someone who grew up in it but never quite belonged. The Great American Novel has just gained another title with Ayad Akhtar's Homeland Elegies.