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Kathryn Rosenberg
I heard a really great interview with Akhtar on the radio yesterday: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/14/911981...
Gerrit
Alexandra Schwartz wrote a wonderful interview with the author, in which he explains his approach to the novel, in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
Lynne
Not an easy read for me but so glad I finished it. Very honest portrayal of Muslim families life as immigrants and the American son who tells their story including life after 911. It is a novel because he embellishes the details and changes some of the outcomes, names, etc. Listen to an interview and you will appreciate why he did this. This is a very important book.
Paula
I'm not sure I could bring myself to read this thing.
Andrew Vandenberg
From Wikipedia:
Akhtar has spoken about wanting the effect of the novel to be like scrolling through social media: “It’s essay. It’s memoir. It’s fiction. It just had to be seamless, in the way that a platform like Instagram is seamless. And one of the pivotal dimensions of that content is the staging and curation of the self.” He adds that crafting the book in the first person, and calling the narrator "Ayad Akhtar" allows him "to have a relationship to the reader that felt more immediate than fiction. But I only know how to write fiction...I wouldn’t have known how to write a memoir."
Akhtar has spoken about wanting the effect of the novel to be like scrolling through social media: “It’s essay. It’s memoir. It’s fiction. It just had to be seamless, in the way that a platform like Instagram is seamless. And one of the pivotal dimensions of that content is the staging and curation of the self.” He adds that crafting the book in the first person, and calling the narrator "Ayad Akhtar" allows him "to have a relationship to the reader that felt more immediate than fiction. But I only know how to write fiction...I wouldn’t have known how to write a memoir."
Sus
I thought this was a novel, but it is not. I skipped some chapters and admit that I only "read" (it was an audio version) 2/3 of this memoir. I have zero interest in reading anyone's biography so anyone who enjoys this genre with a political theme might like this a lot. I would definitely be interested to read any of Ayed Akhtar's fiction.
Bill Holmes
Hard to separate fact and fiction. Hard to know what is an accurate portrayal of culture, bias, politics, and economics vs what is the author's view/opinion. I question the author's purpose of this work is .. .is he the extremist's apologist, the social awareness raiser, or, has he a more sinister purpose in the back ground. In a similar manner, many readers thought "The Jungle" was about the meat industry, while Sinclair's real purpose was to incite a Marxist workers' revolution,.... is Akhtar's real purpose the proposal of Islamic Rule for the U.S., and some version of Sharia Law being the law of the land? After reading 3/4 of the book, I am unsure of his motives. I will agree that he is a GIFTED wordsmith.
Glen Helfand
I thought it was so important to listen to an interview with Akhtar and to find out that many of the characters are indeed fictional. In an era when facts are constantly questioned, it's a smart move, and one that, for me, creates a more complicated filter to read this through.
Robert Blumenthal
I felt that it reads throughout as a memoir, as did Moonglow by Michael Chabon or Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead. The author claims that he made some stuff up to present it more with a Reality TV vibe. But to me, overall, it felt very much like a memoir throughout.
Anne Dymond
I found this a really interesting read and feel it gives me new understanding of the US and of Muslim immigrant experience. Sometimes in read more like social studies than novel -- and like it was definitely putting forth the protagonists' social critique: "America had begun as a colony and that a colony it remained, that is, a place where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought." A little preachy -- but often quite illuminating about things as diverse as rural poverty, racial profiling, self-hatred and shame, the global economy, the partition of India and Pakistan. The chapter on the history of Pakistan and Afghanistan pretty read more like a thinly disguised history lesson than a novel, but it gives important context. Worth pushing through that for the insights to come.
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