One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This: National Book Award
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM • 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.
"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto." —The New York Times
"I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it." —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Omar El Akkad connects the dots between history, experience, and current events in this brilliant read. As an Egyptian Canadian journalist, El Akkad often writes about how powerful Western countries like the U.S. and the U.K. use their might to dictate how wars are fought and economies are run. But while these world powers often claim they wield their influence to uphold values like justice, fairness, and protecting the innocent, El Akkad makes the case that their actions tell another story. He argues that, in reality, the West only acts when doing so will help it extract wealth or maintain control. And because this leaves millions to suffer, he says Western powers have long maintained an unspoken parallel value system to justify themselves—one based largely on white supremacy. His discussion of the U.S. interceding to help war-torn Ukraine while refusing to help civilians in Gaza is an especially trenchant example. In One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, El Akkad illustrates why more people than ever are questioning the global status quo.
