Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

For Moni

Before I start - a very serious spoiler alert. Proceed no further if this book is on your current 'to read' list. This post will spoil it for you more than me saying that the ocean liner sinks at the end of Titanic.

So. An award-winning playwright of Pakistani parentage writes about his life, his parents, the religion and culture into which he was born, Trump's America, wealth, racism.

But is he Telling It Like It Is, with the aim of Truthfulness of a reporter or autobiographer? 

Or is he spinning a compelling story, with complex narrative plot-twists to draw you in? 

Before engaging my critical faculties too much, before deciding whether or not to accept the narrative at face value, I should really know the answer to this key question. I did not; I found that just a few chapters in, I had subconsciously filed the book into the genre of reportage rather than creative fiction.

I have purposefully avoided reading anything about the book while reading the book. I did indeed approach it at face value. So this, then, is the autobiography of an American, born to parents from Pakistan who migrated to the US as brilliant medical graduates under a special visa program in the 1960s to begin a lucrative career in America's well-funded healthcare sector. The author himself went on to have a brilliant career of his own, as a playwright and author. 

The book is essentially about his troubled relationship with his parents - especially his father - and their troubled relationship with America, Islam and Pakistan. He dwells on two cataclysmic turning points in the arc of his family's history - 9/11 and the election of Donald Trump.

Ayad Akhtar is confronted by a society that is racist to the core, materialist, and configured in such a way to ensure the rich continually get richer. The poor, meanwhile, are systemically kept on a treadmill of debt and unfulfilling labour, as they toil to pass ever more wealth to the rich, so they can live in ever greater luxury. The book is strong on family detail, on growing up with a family in Pakistan, frequent visits to the Old Country, contrasts between the two nations. 

As I progressed through the book, and its essential premise is being unfolded, I found doubts creeping into my mind. 

Is this a true story - or is it a work of fiction? Or a blend of both? 

As character after character is introduced, I'm thinking - the publishers of this best-seller must have access to some pretty good lawyers to ensure to protect themselves against lawsuits. Defamation. As we meet Riaz, the Pakistani-American financier - were such a person reading this about himself - he'd be seeking counsel for how to extract millions for the accusations levelled against him in Homeland Elegies (bankrupting local authorities across the US on purpose, ones that had happened to have blocked planning permissions for the building of mosques). Or the heart surgeon who, on operating on patients' hearts, specially scratched lesions inside their aortas which he knew would turn into more lucrative surgical work for him in years to come. And how his employer, a rapacious healthcare company, settled out of court with his victims rather than let the secret out.

I reach the end of the book and finally, burning with curiosity, I check Wikipedia. Now here comes the spoiler: "The book is fiction, though written to resemble a memoir. It includes some autobiographical elements; the protagonist shares the name, background, and career of the author." The doubt that had been building up in me (did he really narrowly avoid sleeping with his half-sister, about whom he didn't know, the result of a long-term affair his father had?)

The crossing over from truth to fiction is unsettling when the author is trying to make profound criticism of America, his homeland. The legitimacy of his depiction of wealth, luxury, greed, debt - an utterly corrupt healthcare system, a banking system designed to keep large corporations wealthy, a legal system that is driven by racism - boils down to the question: fiction or reportage?

Great art belongs to the ages. How will future readers come to terms with this literary form? Will it become commonplace to blend fact and fiction in our post-truth era? Or will the conceit be seen to dilute or spoil the author's searing social message?

I wrote many years ago about another playwright who goes on to pen an autobiography. Janusz Głowacki, the hero of his own picaresque 'autobiography' that (I surmise) also strays deep into fiction. My main criticism of Z głowy was that Głowacki downplays the hard work and effort that goes into writing successful plays - I wrote: "one night [Głowacki] gets very, very drunk with assorted ne'er-do-wells in a dive on the Lower East Side; the next morning he tosses off a play that gets directed by Arthur Penn and stars Christopher Walken. But what about the endless hours of writing, re-drafting, searching for the right bon mot or delicate allusion, forceful punchline or hilarious gag?" Głowacki suggests that his path to literary success was effortless, all inspiration, no perspiration. Akhtar doesn't do this. He describes his writing technique, taught by his English lecturer at university, Maria Moroni (again - was she real or invented?). She tells him that you should keep a dream diary and pencil by your bedside, and return your spine to the position it was in when you had that dream to recall it. Akhtar describes beautifully how, when transcribing dreams, you should start with the most vivid part regardless of chronology, capture as much detail as possible - before scrolling backwards and forwards to other parts of the dream as you remember them. And this is how he captures scenes from memory, from life.

Głowacki pulls the same trick as Akhar in Goodnight Dżerzi - a seemingly straightforward autobiography of a playwright that morphs imperceptibly into fiction - this time a Pole in America, being asked to write a screenplay about a Jewish Pole in America - Jerzy Kosiński. And another Polish writer known for embellishing his reportage with some fanciful tales was Ryszard Kapuściński (about whom here).

It was an extremely worthwhile read for me - on so many levels. The relationship between two countries and two cultures; the relationship between parent and child; the critique of America; the concept of autofiction. One line stands out above all the others: "America is money-worship and racism." My thanks to Moni for suggesting I read it - I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This time two years ago:
Britain for Christmas

This time five years ago:
IT frustrations

This time six years ago:
Wałbrzych's Gold Train - the dream ends

This time eight years ago:
Kitten football

This time nine years ago:
The drainage of Jeziorki

This time ten years ago:
The Eurocrisis - what would Jesus do?
[Remember - the EU was about to fall apart.]

This time 11 years ago:
Orders of magnitude

This time 12 years ago:
Jeziorki in the snow

This time 13 years ago:
Better news on the commuting front

This time 14 years ago:
I no longer recognise the land where I was born