Ayad Akhtar’s new novel illuminates “The Radiance” of a life-changing trauma

Ayad Akhtar is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and the author of the novels “Homeland Elegies” and “American Dervish.” His works explore themes that span religion and identity, cultural assimilation and immigrant aspiration drawn from his upbringing as a Pakistani American in the Midwest. 

His latest book is “The Radiance.” It’s written in a style that fuses the autobiographical with the fictional, as a playwright and author named Ayad Akhtar retreats to a college town in the Hudson Valley to work on his new book. While riding his bike along a country road one day, a pickup truck hits him and flees the scene. The traumatic, near-death experience leaves Akhtar profoundly changed, with a mysterious and mystical sensation of dissociation from the left side of his body that scrambles his sense of self and awakens a spiritual yearning. Meanwhile, his decision to teach a creative writing course on campus triggers a chain of events that erupts in scandal and tragedy. 

Akhtar joins us to discuss all this and more in front of an audience of students at Franklin High School in Portland.

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