NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—this gripping debut novel asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. From the author of What Strange Paradise "Powerful ... as haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road." —The New York Times Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—this gripping debut novel asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. From the author of What Strange Paradise "Powerful ... as haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road." —The New York Times Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.
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Find American War Omar El Akkad in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find American War Omar El Akkad in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Speculative fiction and investigative journalism intersect in a body of work that addresses global conflict, displacement, and political crisis, exemplified by the dystopian debut novel American War. Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian-American author and journalist whose books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world, establishing his standing in contemporary fiction.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1982, El Akkad grew up in Doha, Qatar, before moving to Canada with his family as a teenager. He completed his undergraduate studies at Queen's University at Kingston and went on to work as a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail. The start of his journalism career coincided with the beginning of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported on major international stories, including the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. For his investigative reporting, he earned a National Newspaper Award and the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, alongside three National Magazine Award honorable mentions.
Transitioning from full-time reporting to book-length projects and literary work, El Akkad moved to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon. His essays and prose have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, and GQ. Over the course of his literary career, he has become a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.
Informed by his extensive field reporting on war, migration, and civil unrest, El Akkad writes fiction and nonfiction examining geopolitical power, state-sanctioned violence, and human displacement. His work analyzes how systemic policy decisions impact individual lives, blending documentary observation with narrative storytelling to explore themes of exile, justice, and historical memory.
2 books in catalog
Speculative fiction and investigative journalism intersect in a body of work that addresses global conflict, displacement, and political crisis, exemplified by the dystopian debut novel American War. Omar El Akkad is an Egyptian-Canadian-American author and journalist whose books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world, establishing his standing in contemporary fiction.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1982, El Akkad grew up in Doha, Qatar, before moving to Canada with his family as a teenager. He completed his undergraduate studies at Queen's University at Kingston and went on to work as a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail. The start of his journalism career coincided with the beginning of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported on major international stories, including the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. For his investigative reporting, he earned a National Newspaper Award and the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, alongside three National Magazine Award honorable mentions.
Transitioning from full-time reporting to book-length projects and literary work, El Akkad moved to the United States and settled in Portland, Oregon. His essays and prose have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, and GQ. Over the course of his literary career, he has become a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.
Informed by his extensive field reporting on war, migration, and civil unrest, El Akkad writes fiction and nonfiction examining geopolitical power, state-sanctioned violence, and human displacement. His work analyzes how systemic policy decisions impact individual lives, blending documentary observation with narrative storytelling to explore themes of exile, justice, and historical memory.
