One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Omar El Akkad
Available as Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
The debut non-fiction book from the award-winning novelist and journalist unpicks the hypocrisy and injustices of the West at a volatile and shocking time
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West offered freedom and justice for all. Over the past twenty years he reported on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more. He won awards for his journalism and his fiction. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.
This powerful book is a chronicle of Omar’s painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means – as a citizen, as a father – to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness. This is a book for everyone who wants something better.
“It is difficult to understand the nature of a true rupture while it is still tearing through the fabric of our world. Yet that is precisely what Omar El Akkad has accomplished, putting broken heart and shredded illusions into words with tremendous insight, skill and courage. A unique and urgently needed book”
Naomi Klein
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“Urgent, essential, and profound. A lightning bolt - sets fire to our comforting lies, and illuminates a way forwards”
Riz Ahmed
“A startling, shocking, beautiful and essential book”
Brian Eno
“Part elegy, part rallying cry, this magnificent book should, and will, be required reading for future generations trying to reckon with one of humanity’s darkest chapters”
TÉa Obreht
“If you cannot fathom the scale and savagery of the genocide against the Palestinian people, if you feel the world is smashed off its axis and you fell profoundly alone, profoundly alone, profoundly mad, then read this clear, elegant and devastatingly truthful account of why you are not mad, and not alone; read this shatteringly honest book by a great writer who also cannot reconcile those things, but is - on behalf of us all, and with his whole soul - trying”
Max Porter
Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world.
@omarelakkad | omarelakkad.com