Omar El Akkad

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad is a bold, raw reckoning with Western ideals, their promises, and their failures. Written with passion and urgency, this book captures El Akkad’s profound disillusionment with a system that he feels has betrayed its promises, especially toward Black, brown, and Indigenous people. This disillusionment is something many Westerners may struggle to grasp fully, but El Akkad’s perspective is valuable for understanding the worldviews of those often marginalized or overlooked.

Reading this book felt intense, almost like being reprimanded by someone who has seen too much suffering and betrayal to stay silent. While El Akkad’s anger is at times overwhelming, his fury is born of experience, loss, and hard truths that demand to be acknowledged. As a white Midwestern man, I found myself grappling with some of his points, often feeling unable to fully relate but knowing his perspective is crucial and rooted in realities I may never fully experience or understand.

Though I don’t connect with his experiences directly, the book touched me on a fundamental level: as a human, I could empathize with his pain and frustration. And while I wouldn’t put my family or their well-being on the line for any ideology, I do believe this book serves as a powerful opportunity to listen to voices we seldom hear in mainstream narratives. This isn’t a book that seeks comfort or acceptance—it’s a challenge to see the cracks in Western ideals and the real impact of their shortcomings.

For anyone ready to confront these uncomfortable truths, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is worth the read. It’s thought-provoking and important, a true book for our time.… (more)

It was a good choice to read ‘American War’ straight after [b:The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047|27064345|The Mandibles A Family, 2029–2047|Lionel Shriver|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461532661s/27064345.jpg|46892513] by Lionel Shriver. Both are dystopian future histories of America and ‘American War’ includes much that I felt [b:The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047|27064345|The Mandibles A Family, 2029–2047|Lionel Shriver|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461532661s/27064345.jpg|46892513] wilfully ignored. Shriver’s novel depicted a suspiciously peaceful US, while ‘American War’ is named for a new civil war taking place. It ignored climate change, while ‘American War’ features inundated coastlines, frequent mega storms, and a permanent heatwave. And it ignored the potential for foreign countries to covertly manipulate US politics, which ‘American War’ does not. In short, I found El Akkad’s novel a much more nuanced and convincing picture of how the US could implode. The second civil war over a ban on fossil fuels seemed horribly plausible, as did its conclusion. Even the use of biological warfare didn’t seem that much of a stretch. In short, the future world was well thought through.

The plot centres on a woman called Sarat. Beginning in her childhood, when she and her family are displaced by the new civil war, it follows her growing involvement in the conflict. She is a fascinating character and the narrative is well-paced and tense. I thought at a couple of points that it leaned slightly too hard on serendipity: chance encounters between characters long separated. Nonetheless, the story it tells is a powerful one and the family bonds are movingly depicted. The chapters set in a new iteration of Guantanamo Bay are particularly upsetting, mostly because they show America trapped in repeating the same horrific mistakes. This is probably what gives ‘American War’ its greater plausibility, while [b:The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047|27064345|The Mandibles A Family, 2029–2047|Lionel Shriver|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1461532661s/27064345.jpg|46892513] appears naively ahistorical and libertarian. On the other hand, the gushing praise for ‘American War’ on the cover seemed a little overblown. I found it a very good dystopian novel, but there are a lot of those. It didn’t significantly distinguish itself in terms of structure or insight, despite an unusual main character and thoughtful world-building.… (more)