Last year I started writing about what it feels like to live in this part of the world and essentially watch my tax dollars pay to finance wholesale slaughter. And for basically the next year it was all I could write about, it was the only thing I was able to put down on paper, and the result is this book. I think of it as sort of part memoir, part of it is about my life my experiences from a very early age and why I sound like this, why I speak this language, the sense that I’ve been attuned to the west from a very early age as this place where there are theseunderlying foundational principles of fairness and equal justice and so on. And to be in this moment, this culmination of so many previous moments, where I’m questioning all of that. The other part of the book is essentially an accounting of the last year of waking up every morning and seeing evidence of the worst things that human beings can do to one another, and trying to exist in that framework. It’s the kind of book that’s going to barge in through the door pretending to be an argument. In truth I’m not trying to argue with anyone, I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind. Ishiguro once said that ‘all literature essentially boils down to someone saying this is what it feels like for me, can you hear me? Does it also feel that way for you?’ And I think that’s essentially what this book is.
― Omar El Akkad, Interview, The Lighthouse Bookshop
What booksellers are saying about One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
- If you are living and breathing in the 21st century, you must read this book. Many who should still be on this earth are not, and reading this book is one small thing you can do to unlearn many harmful narratives that have caused unthinkable atrocities..
― Rachel Randolph, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee | BUY
- This breakup letter to the West is sorely needed. Omar El Akkad puts words to feelings I didn’t know how to articulate before reading this. He not only directly confronts America’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians, but also forces the reader to recognize that the failure of American liberalism is not limited to this issue. This will be a book I return to over and over again.
― Becca Naylor, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
- A brilliant, beautiful, absolutely essential read.
― Gaël LeLamer, Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida | BUY
- “Essential reading” has become a hollow phrase, but if any book could restore its meaning, it would be this one. This is a book about Palestine, but it is equally a book about the large-scale brand of dehumanization that gets normalized under the auspices of power. As a Middle Eastern person, I’m in awe of El Akkad’s ability to give language to the experience of a particular kind of otherness in the context of a country–ours–that has been so hellbent on destroying my family’s part of the world for decades. But it’s not my heritage, or even El Akkad’s, that makes this book so important, and so urgent. It’s the clarity with which he is able to cut through all of the levels of noise, bias, and hypocrisy that most of us have grown inured to, that all of us need to reckon with. I believe the sad promise of this book’s perfect, gut-punch title–how clear our vision gets when it’s too late to do anything at all–and I believe in its ability to open eyes and dramatically rewire awareness and understanding.
― Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama | BUY
About 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 Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world.
