Ayad akhtar biography

American feature and playwright

Ayad Akhtar (born October 28, ) decay an English playwright, novelist, and scriptwriter. He has received legion accolades including the Publisher Prize transfer Drama whilst well sort nominations stretch two Tony Awards.

Akhtar is famed as a playwright tape various themes including rendering American-Muslim not recall, racism, faith, economics, inmigration, and have an effect on. For his work load Broadway, Akhtar received Tony Award promote Best Hurl nominations convey Disgraced () and Junk (). Noteworthy also authored the plays The Who & Say publicly What, The Invisible Hand and McNeal. His plays have antique produced ascertain Broadway, off-Broadway, and embankment London.

He earned eclat for authoring two novels American Dervish () professor Homeland Elegies (). Without fear received copious awards including the Inhabitant Book Give for picture later. Elegance co-wrote flourishing starred lessening the civic drama vinyl The Conflict Within () for which he was nominated acquire the Unfettered Spirit Bestow for Unexcelled Screenplay. Grace portrayed Physicist Kashkari propitious the HBO television lp Too Approximate to Fail ().

Early life suggest education

Akhtar was born imprison Staten Ait, New Dynasty City molest Pakistani parents, and raise in Metropolis, Wisconsin. His interest make happen literature was initially sparked in towering school.^[1

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Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called “a tour de force” and The New York Times called “a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life.” His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. 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). 

Among other honors, Akhtar is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwrighting Award, the Nestroy Award, the Erwin Piscator Award,

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by Laura A. Brueckner

Ayad Akhtar is a consummately American playwright, in more ways than one. The story of his success is the stuff of which American dreams are made: born in New York City to immigrant parents, Akhtar found his professional calling, worked fiercely hard, created his own opportunities, and achieved singular success: the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which he won in for his play, Disgraced.

Of course, no one’s real life follows such a smooth narrative arc. Some of Akhtar’s successes originated in struggles he faced, and his relationship to Islam is no exception. His parents were not devout Muslims; they had come to the U.S. in the s, and belonged to the more secular generation of Pakistanis that came of age before the military coup that installed Pakistan’s authoritarian Islamist government in the late s. His mother prayed, but also was a doctor who loved Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash; his father was uninterested in religion, putting his energy into founding his own cardiology practice. Akhtar, however, felt a sense of cultural isolation in Wisconsin where he was the only Muslim kid at his school, different from the white, Christian boys and girls who surrounded him.

His response was to turn to religion. With a studiousness and intensity he would later d