Conversations with Authors - Ayad Akhtar (Virtual Event)
Saturday, September 19th • 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT
Ayad Akhtar
in conversation with Amitava Kumar
Conversations with Authors is our free virtual event series! Join us throughout the week at 7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT for a new chat with a different author.
Ayad Akhtar's new novel, Homeland Elegies, is the profound and provocative story of an immigrant father and his son searching for belonging—in post-Trump America, and with each other.
Ayad is a novelist and playwright whose work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the author of American Dervish, published in over 20 languages and named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within.
Amitava Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and two novels. His novel Immigrant, Montana was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New York Times—and included in Barack Obama’s list of favorite books of 2018. Among Kumar’s honors are a Guggenheim fellowship and a fellowship from USArtists. His writing has appeared in Granta, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, The Nation, and The New York Times. Kumar is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. His new novel, A Time Outside This Time, will be published by Knopf in 2021.
Below, please find links to purchase their books.
A "profound and provocative" new work by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and American Dervish: an immigrant father and his son search for belonging -- in post-Trump America, and with each other (Kirkus Reviews).
"Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable." -- Salman Rushdie
A deeply personal work about identity and
From the author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced, a stirring and explosive novel about an American Muslim family in Wisconsin struggling with faith and belonging in the pre-9/11 world.
Hayat Shah is a young American in love for the first time.
From the author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced, a fast-paced play that exposes the financial deal making behind the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 1980s.
Set in 1985, Junk tells the story of Robert Merkin, resident genius of the upstart investment firm Sacker Lowell.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
From the author of Homeland Elegies, a "sparkling and combustible" play (Bloomberg) about identity in America after September 11.
"Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings.
The author of Homeland Elegies and Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced explores the conflict that erupts within a Muslim family in Atlanta when an independent-minded daughter writes a provocative novel that offends her more conservative father and sister.
Zarina has a bone to pick with the place of women in her Muslim faith, and she's been writiISBN: 9780316324533Availability: Special OrderPublished: Back Bay Books - August 25th, 2015A "tense, provocative" play (Seattle Times) from the author of Homeland Elegies and the Pulitzer Prize winner Disgraced -- a chilling examination of how far we will go to survive and the consequences of the choices we make.
In remote Pakistan, Nick Bright awaits his fate.$17.00ISBN: 9780525436676Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Vintage - June 11th, 2019A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR$29.99ISBN: 9789386021007Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Rupa Publications - June 30th, 2017The Lovers is about a man in search of a love story. This man, our narrator, is Kailash-a new immigrant, eager to shine. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov and sometimes AK-47, even AK. In his account of his years at a university in New York, AK takes us through the bittersweet arc of youth and love. There is discovery and disappointment.
$25.95ISBN: 9780822359302Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Duke University Press - May 15th, 2015To be a writer, Amitava Kumar says, is to be an observer. The twenty-six essays in Lunch with a Bigot are Kumar's observations of the world put into words. A mix of memoir, reportage, and criticism, the essays include encounters with writers Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, discussions on the craft of writing, and a portrait of the struggles of a Bollywood actor.
ISBN: 9780822357049Availability: Special OrderPublished: Duke University Press - April 4th, 2014It is not only the past that lies in ruins in Patna, it is also the present. But that is not the only truth about the city that Amitava Kumar explores in this vivid, entertaining account of his hometown.
$25.95ISBN: 9780822345787Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Duke University Press - June 10th, 2010Part reportage and part protest, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb is an inquiry into the cultural logic and global repercussions of the war on terror. At its center are two men convicted in U.S.
ISBN: 9780822346821Availability: Special OrderPublished: Duke University Press - June 10th, 2010A young poet is killed by her lover, a politician, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Soon afterward, across India in Bombay, an idealistic journalist is hired by a movie director to write a Bollywood screenplay about the murdered poet. Research for the script takes the writer, Binod, back to Bihar, where he and his cousin Rabinder were raised.
$130.00ISBN: 9780415942102Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: Routledge - October 4th, 2002First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
$31.95ISBN: 9780520218178Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 DaysPublished: University of California Press - June 14th, 2000Passport Photos, a self-conscious act of artistic and intellectual forgery, is a report on the immigrant condition. A multigenre book combining theory, poetry, cultural criticism, and photography, it explores the complexities of the immigration experience, intervening in the impersonal language of the state. Passport Photos joins books by writers like Edward Said and Trinh T.
