'Homeland Elegies,' Novel by Film Alumnus Ayad Akhtar ’02, Named Among 'New York Times' "20 Books We're Watching For in 2020"

Homeland Elegies, a forthcoming novel by alumnus Ayad Akhtar ’02, was named one of The New York Times' "20 Books We're Watching For in 2020." 

Drawing on Akhtar’s own experience as the son of Muslim immigrants, Homeland Elegies is the story of a son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a fractured, post-9/11 America. 

Publisher Little, Brown and Company, quoted acclaimed author Salman Rushdie in praise of the book, “An unflinchingly honest self-portrait by a brilliant Muslim-American writer, and, beyond that, an unsparing examination of both sides of that fraught hyphenated reality. Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable."

"At the core of this flashing, kinetic coil of a story-part 1001 Nights, part Reality TV-is a passionate, wrenching portrayal of Americans exiled into "otherness" by a post-9/11 world,” said renowned author Jennifer Egan.

A graduate of the Film program, Akhtar is no stranger to acclaim, with his 2013 play, Disgraced, earning a Pulitzer Prize. Disgraced centers on a Manhattan dinner party at which a successful Pakistani-American lawyer is forced to confront his own motives for camouflaging his heritage.

Disgraced premiered at The American Theater Company in Chicago in 2012, followed by a staging at Lincoln Center, both to laudatory reviews. The Lincoln Center run featured Aasif Mandvi (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and Heidi Armbruster (Younger) in the lead roles. 

Complementing his playwriting career is Akhtar’s background as an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, and actor. His debut novel, American Dervish, was a 2012 Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year, and his play The Invisible Hand garnered him several awards, including a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. 

Akhtar also co-wrote and starred in the feature film The War Within, which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay, on top of starring in HBO’s 2011 adaptation of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail.

Homeland Elegies will be released in September 2020 by Little, Brown and Company.