Homeland Elegies: Ayad Akhtar on Mourning America

By LARB Radio HourOctober 11, 2020

Homeland Elegies: Ayad Akhtar on Mourning America
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Ayad Akhtar talks about his new book Homeland Elegies, a hybrid of memoir, cultural criticism, psychological study, and loosely plotted novel that uniquely responds to the chaos and confusion of contemporary American life. The hosts also talk with Akhtar about the political, social, and affective entanglements of diaspora consciousness and experience (in this case, for Muslims from Pakistan living in the US), and about the Whitmanian fantasy of a diverse nation.
Also, Vivian Gornick, author of Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, returns to recommend a collection she has returned to her entire life, Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues.

LARB Contributor

The LARB Radio Hour is hosted by Eric Newman, Medaya Ocher, and Kate Wolf.

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