On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.
This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.
This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.
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Find One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This Omar El Akkad in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This 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.
