Akhtar is a first generation Pakistani-American born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee. He had previously written and starred in the film The War Within (2005), in which he portrayed a Pakistani engineering student who became a terrorist.[24] He studied at Brown University and Columbia University.[11] His debut novel was American Dervish (2012), which studies "the Muslim religious experience in America".[24]
The son of immigrant doctors, Akhtar had spent a decade exploring dual identity before writing this play.[23] Akhtar decided to write from his own experiences. He said that, at a metaphorical level, in order to write this play he had to "turn and look over my shoulder at what I was running away from. And at that moment there was an explosion of creativity."[23]
