Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War, is an unlikely mash-up of unsparing war reporting and plot elements familiar to readers of the recent young-adult dystopian series The Hunger Games and Divergent. To order a copy for £12.74 go to or call 03. The premise is provocative – not least in how global warming trumps all else to trigger discord – but too often the drama feels like an afterthought.Īmerican War by Omar El Akkad is published by Picador (£14.99). While there’s no shortage of action in her grisly journey from victim to aggressor, American War is solemn, slow and somewhat schoolmasterly in its grim determination to bring the miseries of present-day trouble spots to the US. The conflict (stoked by a rising pan-Arab empire) is described from the vantage point of the early 22nd century, by a dying historian anxious to record the pivotal role of his Louisiana-born aunt, groomed in childhood to join the insurgency against the north. An Amazon Best Book of April 2017: American War will give you chills. His new novel is forthcoming from Knopf.S et in the US some 60 years hence, Omar El Akkad’s dystopian debut imagines civil war breaking out after a group of southern states revolt against a fossil-fuel ban imposed when extreme flooding leaves Florida under water. His short story “Government Slots” was selected for the Best Canadian Stories 2020 anthology. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It is set in the United States in the near future, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which the Second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. American War is the first novel by the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist.

American war el akkad