Ayad Akhtar blurs fiction and reality in new novel, 'The Radiance'
A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author has a new novel that explores big questions about states of being and the state of America. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown spoke with Ayad Akhtar about "The Radiance" for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.
This week, 22 new books are set to release, including works from acclaimed authors Min Jin Lee, Hernan Diaz, and Ayad Akhtar. Lee's American Hagwon is a family saga filled with intrigue and secrets, praised for its exquisite prose. Diaz's Ply presents a "page-turning, pleasurably disorienting, and deeply humane vision of a possible future."
Akhtar's The Radiance is described as a "fantastic surprise" that balances intimate and wide-angled cultural exploration, showcasing vulnerability, shrewdness, compassion, and ruthlessness. Meanwhile, memoirs by Evan Gershkowitz, Cheyenne Roundtree, and Mahmoud Khalil provide personal perspectives on imprisonment and detention. Gershkowitz's This Cursed Beautiful Land is a tribute to journalism, a "taut thriller of high stakes 'hostage diplomacy,'" and a meditation on hope and apathy under authoritarian rule.
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