Thought Provoking Reads, Part 2 -- "Homeland Elegies" by Ayad Akhtar

I've been warily circling Ayad Akhtar's "Homeland Elegies" since it came out last year. On one hand, I've seen all of Akhtar's plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Disgraced," and have found them extremely thought provoking. So a new book by Akhtar definitely piqued my interest. On the other hand, I find the concept of autofiction confusing. While the protagonist in "Homeland Elegies" is named Ayad Akhtar, the book is not a memoir. Nonetheless, the story bears a significant resemblance to the real Akhtar's life and -- I assume -- the narrator's thoughts and feelings often dovetail with Akhtar's own. But with autofiction one can never be sure where the lines are drawn. Short story long, I didn't race out to get a copy of the book when it was hot off the press. 

Then one day "Homeland Elegies" popped up as a daily deal in Audible. With one click, the novel was in my queue, with Akhtar himself as the narrator. It's a fascinating story. 

In the novel, Akhtar explores what it means to be a Muslim-American.  Despite being born and raised in the United States, the narrator's identity as a Muslim is always part of the equation. In one chapter, his car breaks down and the tow truck driver asks Ayad about his name. It's illuminating to be privy to Akhtar's thought process as he decides how to answer this seemingly simple question.  He quickly assesses the driver and believes he can give him the real answer. It's an Egyptian name, but he's not Egyptian. His parents are from Pakistan, but he was born here. As Akhtar goes through the explanation, he soon realizes this honesty was a miscalculation. The driver's wariness and hostility grow with each sentence. 

It's not long after this encounter that the narrator -- a playwright -- decides to no longer pretend in his writing that he feels like an American. Akhtar (the real person) said in an interview with Evan Osnos that "this epiphany isn't too dissimilar from my own experience." The result was a play that won a Pulitzer Prize and opened up the narrator's world in unexpected ways. 

The narrator's success brings us to the other significant theme of the book -- American capitalism. As Akhtar says in the interview, "Property has its own point of view. When you begin to own property, your ideas change. It changes your political consciousness. It changes your relationship to the world." He went on to observe, "It's easy to criticize capitalism, but it's easier to enjoy its benefits. That's the dilemma we're in."  

Throughout the book, Akhtar visits this issue through his and his parents' experience. Both parents were doctors, but it is his father's practice we return to periodically in the story. We learn in the first chapter that his father was Trump's cardiologist (long before his political rise), and he is admittedly taken with Trump's wealth. Who wouldn't enjoy being flown first class from Wisconsin to New York and put up at one of the overblown Trump hotels?  His interactions with Trump lead Dr. Akhtar to feel he knows the man in a way the political pundits don't when Trump decides to run for President. This provides a set up for some interesting dinner table conversation. (Akhtar has declined to say whether the Donald was in fact one of his father's patients.) 

"Homeland Elegies" is way too complex a book for me to do justice to it here. It challenged me to think about our world from a different perspective than my own. It helped both frame and clarify some issues that have been lurking in my subconscious. On top of that, it's an interesting story penned by a very intelligent writer. 

To listen to the interview between Ahktar and Osnos done for Politics & Prose, click here. It's well worth an hour of your time even if you're not going to read the book. Interestingly, Akhtar says he never considered writing the story as a memoir. He is a dramatist at heart and believed pure reporting on his life experiences would be less than compelling. Every story should have a writer to shape it. 

And I'll leave you with a tidbit if "Homeland Elegies" isn't yet on your bookshelf and you're intrigued -- Akhtar thinks the audiobook is the "best and final version" of the novel.  He believes hearing the voices of the characters lends a nuance to the novel that might be missing from a reading of its pages. And while having an author read his own work is always a risk, Akhtar is a trained actor and his performance is very well done. I couldn't recommend it more highly. 

After all this thinking, I'm settling in with a copy of "Eight Perfect Murders" by Peter Swanson. Whatever's on your nightstand, happy reading!