ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS
BY OMAR EL AKKAD
FEBRUARY 25, 2025 EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST
PUBLISHER: MCLELLAND AND STEWART
|
|
|
|
|
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION • Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism • Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction • Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail, NPR, Book Riot
From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.
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.
Indigo / Amazon
|
See also:
"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto. . . . With precision and passion, [El Akkad] compels readers to close the emotional distance between 'us' and 'them' and to consider the immense suffering of civilians with renewed urgency."
—New York Times
"One Day is powerful, angry, but always compelling in its moral logic, and damn hard to put down. . . . by the end my heart was drumming. . . . For me it was cathartic, almost spiritual. . . . It is an important book, a must-read."
—Dina Nayeri, The Guardian
"A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy."
—Kirkus Reviews
"[A]n urgent call for justice throughout the world and a deconstruction of the lies that exist within the promises offered by the West. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is both vulnerable and necessary, calling together those who want something better than what the West has served up to continue the fight for a more just future."
—Chicago Review of Books
"A lightning bolt of a book—bracing in its personal honesty, political insight, and moral clarity. Omar el Akkad sets fire to the lies we comfort ourselves with and in doing so illuminates a way forwards.”
—Riz Ahmed
"One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This wants us to answer its questions with the greatest possible honesty, and to embrace those answers as our true companions. What it gives us is nothing less than lionhearted, dauntless, unembellished love."
—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
"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, author of The Morningside
"An extraordinary, essential work of fury and humanity, as well as a damning indictment of Western hypocrisy and institutional malignity. I cannot conceive of a more important book to read right now, or a more incisive and elegant articulation of this dark time. Every page contains a sentence or a paragraph I wanted to tear out and nail to the wall. I wish I could send a copy of El Akkad’s moral call to arms to every person in America, every person in the West—the outraged and the apathetic alike."
—Dan Sheehan, author of Restless Souls
|
See also:
One Day as reviewed by Dina Nayeri The Guardian – February 14, 2025
|
About the book:
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
by Omar El Akkad
McClelland and Stewart – 188 pages $16.99 (Kindle)
Publication Date: February 25, 2025
|
|
|
|
About the Author: Jon Meacham
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. El Akkad has reported on issues including the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, and the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award, a National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting, and the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists. El Akkad was a finalist for the 2017 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for his novel American War. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Biography Credit: Writers’ Trust of Canada.
|
|
|
Book Review / Revue de livres
Disclaimer: Articles are chosen for relevance and circulated for information only. Views expressed are those of the respective journalists / authors. Republication does not infer endorsement.
Book Review Editor: Ralph Mahar - Suggestions for Book Reviews will be gratefully received at thepillarsociety.bulletins@gmail.com
|
|
