‘I’m sitting on the side that’s launching bombs’: author Omar El Akkad on the hypocrisy of the west
The award-winning writer’s new book contends with how the war on Gaza shattered his fragile faith in the so-called free world
Omar El Akkad grew up believing in an idealized America. Born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, and transplanted as a teenager to Canada, the writer saw the west for its freedoms – a place where, unlike at home, he could check out a William S Burroughs book from the library and where the naked baby on the cover of the Nirvana album he had on repeat hadn’t been blacked out by a censor.
He’d go on to build a career as a reporter with the Globe and Mail, covering the US occupation of Afghanistan, the prison at Guantánamo Bay and the Arab uprisings of 2010-2011, before moving to the US and publishing two award-winning novels – American War, an account of a future US ravaged by war and climate disaster, and What Strange Paradise, a story of a Syrian boy who survives a shipwreck off Greece.
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