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Ayad Akhtar

Biography

Ayad Akhtar

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages, and he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ayad is the author of AMERICAN DERVISH, published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012, as well as his latest novel, HOMELAND ELEGIES. He lives in New York City.

Books by Ayad Akhtar

by Ayad Akhtar - Fiction

HOMELAND ELEGIES blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son and the country they both call home. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one --- least of all himself --- in the process.

by Ayad Akhtar - Fiction

"In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.... Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching these characters rip into these forbidden topics, there's no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater" (New York Times).

by Ayad Akhtar - Fiction

Hayat Shah is a young Pakistani American in love for the first time. Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. When Mina begins dating a man, Hayat is confused by his feelings of betrayal. His growing passions force him to question all that he has come to believe is true.