Homeland Elegies is an intriguing mix of autobiography and fiction. The protagonist is named after the author, Ayad Akhtar. The fictional Ayad is a writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a successful play called Disgraced, just like the real Ayad. The fictional Ayad’s father is a doctor, just like the real Ayad’s father. These little bits of fact will make you wonder, as you read the novel, how many other details are based on actual events that happened to the author. Ayad Akhtar does this on purpose as a commentary on the confusion between fact and fiction that we see today in social media and the news. What is truth? What is “fake news”? Are we discerning enough to not take things at face value? It is this blending of fact and fiction that initially attracted me to read Homeland Elegies, and I am very glad that I read it.

Homeland Elegies reads like a series of short stories or essays rather than a novel. Each chapter is centered around a different situation that the protagonist finds himself in, but the overall theme of the novel is life as a Muslim in America, especially in post-9/11 America. It is also an honest and critical look at what it means to be an American. Homeland Elegies is brutal in its criticism of American society, so brutal, it makes you wonder why anyone with any sense would want to live there. So what does it mean to be American? It means acquiring as much wealth as possible to the expense of your fellow Americans. It means caring more about cold, hard cash rather than about human lives. This is why Americans cannot even go to the hospital without being bankrupted, or just choose not to go to the hospital at all because they cannot afford to. And this is why white men have all the power in America, because they are the ones with all the wealth. At one point in the novel, Ayad is asked by an older, white man why he doesn’t leave America if he doesn’t like it there. But Ayad was born in America, and America is his home, warts and all.

The belief of the non-white American being “other” and not belonging makes, to no surprise, a recurring appearance throughout the book. One tense chapter is about Ayad’s car breaking down in Scranton, Pennsylvania (where The Office is set). He is assisted by an initially friendly police officer who becomes more and more hostile as he questions Ayad about where he was born and the origins of his name. Ayad tells him that his name is Egyptian and he was born in America, but this does not stop the police officer from going off on how one of the 9/11 hijackers was Egyptian, like Ayad is automatically a terrorist just because of his Egyptian name. In another tense chapter, Ayad finds himself wandering around Manhattan right after the planes hit the World Trade Center, looking for his cousin, not really taking a moment to think about how it is not a good idea for a Muslim man to be wandering around New York City at that time. He gets in line at a hospital to donate blood, until he is attacked by an Islamophobic man and wets himself out of fear. This prompts him to steal a necklace with a cross from a Salvation Army to wear as protection from further attacks, but also as a symbol of his shame of being a Muslim, a shame that he should not feel. Is it fair to assume that all white men are misogynistic, racist assholes? No. So why it is fair to assume that all Muslims are heathens and terrorists?

Ayad Akhtar even turns the honesty in Homeland Elegies towards himself and his family members. One chapter is dedicated to his promiscuity and contracting syphilis (can you see why you will spend your time wondering how much of this book is fact vs. fiction?). In another chapter, Ayad befriends a Muslim financier who helps him invest his money and make a fortune under rather dubious means that involves scamming towns (including Scranton, PA) that would not allow Mosques to be built. Homeland Elegies is just as much Ayad’s father’s story as it is Ayad’s story. The book opens with his father’s relationship with Donald Trump, who was one of his patients for a few years throughout the nineties (again, is this real??). His father admired Trump and wanted to emulate him, which included cheating on his wife with prostitutes whenever he went to New York City for an appointment with Trump. He voted for Trump, much to Ayad’s disgust, and continued to support him for awhile after his election, until Trump started with the travel bans against Muslims. Ayad’s father made and lost two fortunes while in America, and towards the end of his life became so disillusioned with America that he went back home to Pakistan before he died.

Homeland Elegies is a very interesting and moving novel about family, and about loving your country no matter how effed up it is. It is humorous and tragic and at times unbelievable even though you know there is a kernel of truth behind everything Akhtar writes about. I definitely think you should read it.