New novels in conversation with America

The American novel is being rewritten, and those once ignored are contributing their words to the narrative. Many new rhythms and inflections are derived from foreign shores. These aren’t accounts of first-generation immigrant experiences, valuable as that subject is; instead, this is work by writers who claim America for their own from the start. In an earlier time, those such as Roth and Bellow stitched their Jewishness into American fabric. Now, it’s time for other ethnicities to add their threads.

Two remarkable new novels illustrate this argument: Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar, and Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam. Very dissimilar from each other in form and content, they compellingly bring out what it means to live in America – and elsewhere -- during this fractured era.

Akhtar and Alam are American-born; their parents migrated to the country from Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively. An awarded playwright, Akhtar has written an earlier well-received novel and Alam, too, has been heralded for two previous works of fiction. Their new narratives are possibly their most powerful yet.

Homeland Elegies can be described as autofiction, a genre directly inspired and influenced by the author’s own life. Appropriately enough, Akhtar reflects on Whitman at the start: “My tongue, too, is homegrown -- every atom of this blood formed of this soil, this air. But these multitudes will not be my own. And these will be no songs of celebration.”

One way to read this novel is as a collection of linked set pieces in which the narrator investigates his role in various situations. There’s a bemused conversation with his Trump-supporting father; a debate with a book-loving aunt about Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (he’s for, she’s against) followed by reflections on being a Muslim today; a diatribe by an uncle in Abbottabad about the geopolitics of Pakistan after 9/11; an account of an intense love affair that ends with heartbreak and syphilis; and a relationship with a filthy rich financial advisor who has strong, contrarian views on making and spending money.

Another way to look at it is as a warm and nuanced account of a father-son relationship over the years. Akhtar Sr, a cardiologist who claims in the book to have advised Donald Trump years ago on incipient heart issues, is initially in thrall to the American Dream, but time and temptation turn him into a very different person. With this comes a shifting relationship to his son, a bond which is close but often prickly and defensive.

Throughout, Akhtar employs a skilled playwright’s facility with dialogue and scene-setting. The book, however, is much more than a play-turned-novel. Among its delights are Akhtar’s long, controlled sentences, where one can witness a sensitive, mediating consciousness coming to terms with the reality it seeks to understand. These are “jangled chords for shriller songs -- hymns to the esoteric din, to decline, to the dollar, to our ailing nation and its foundering myths.”

In occasional discursive sections, American attitudes to race, class and ambition are put under the microscope. At one point, Akhtar reflects: “It’s about racism and money worship -- and when you’re on the correct side of both those things? That’s when you really belong.”

Race, class, and ambition are also very much present in Alam’s novel. In conception and execution, though, it couldn’t be more different from Homeland Elegies. Leave the World Behind is squarely a work of literary fiction, with doses of suspense, even horror.

It begins with a professional white couple and their two teenage children checking into a secluded Airbnb villa on Long Island for a week’s holiday. On the first night itself, there’s an unannounced knock on the front door. Guess who’s coming to dinner: it’s an older Black couple who claim that the property belongs to them. They say that they had no choice but to drive all the way here because of an unexpected power blackout in the city.

An uneasy dynamic prevails between the occupants as they converse about the best way to resolve their predicament. It turns out that contact with the outside world is limited, at best, as the mobile phone network and Wi-fi have stopped working. Occasional forays in the car to surrounding areas prove unhelpful.

As the couples try to behave in socially acceptable ways, and as the children come to their own terms with the situation, it becomes clear that the wider environment has been overwhelmed by an inexplicable event. It’s as though one has to live through a lockdown without being told the reason why.

The stresses between the couples are matched by external tensions: there are suddenly-cracked panes of glass, unexpected flamingo and deer sightings and ominously vacant roads, for example. “The pace of things used to be slower,” Alam writes, in words that ring only too true. “Now a nut didn’t have to shoot an archduke; every day was a jumble of near-simultaneous oddity.” As the novel progresses, the screws are turned by incorporating flash-forwards, future scenarios which the characters know nothing of in the present.

In developing what can be seen as a metaphor for the way we live now, Alam doesn’t gloss over particulars of characterisation. The couples are relatable in ways that aren’t necessarily likeable, as they tip-toe around issues, try and live up to roles assigned to them, and temper their selfishness with conviviality.

The particulars of parenting also are effectively conveyed, a blend of love, concern, and finding the best way to act in troubling situations. “Parenthood was never knowing what was going to hurt your kids,” we’re told, “but knowing only that something, inevitably, would.”

Homeland Elegies and Leave the World Behind were written before the pandemic, yet contain much that is especially relevant today. They probe the ways in which we behave towards each other, question attitudes that endure because they are conventional, and highlight social systems that create expectations and disappointments. Both novels are essential.