When he was a college student in the 1990s, Ayad Akhtar writes in “Homeland Elegies” (Little, Brown, 345 pages, $28), a beloved professor startled him with her belief that “America had begun as a colony and . a colony it remained, that is, a place still defined by its plunder, where enrichment was paramount and civil order always an afterthought.” Today this view would constitute standard-issue academic and op-ed boilerplate, but to the young author it was a jarring “corrective to a tradition of endless American self-congratulation.” The placement of the conversion story at the very start of the book sets up Mr. Akhtar’s...

Source: Wall Street Journal October 23, 2020 15:45 UTC