Description

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.

Publisher Review

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 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 — TEA OBREHT Omar El Akkad’s poetic voice, with its elegant power, can only come from someone who is one with the world, with its joy and pain — ECE TEMELKURAN This book is a howl from the heart of our age. I struggle to find more precise wording that might capture its ferocious, fracturing rage, as it seeks to describe the indescribable, make coherent an increasingly incoherent world. — RICHARD FLANAGAN Omar El Akkad’s book is a brilliant mosaic of heartfelt reflections on the sad state of the world, one that dared to end in hope — RAJA SHEHADEH To get a glimpse of how we in the early 21st century might one day be judged for our passivity and hypocrisy, I urge you to read Omar El Akkad’s astonishing book — DAVID OLUSOGA In this powerful indictment of Western complicity in the genocide of Palestinians, Omar El Akkad asks: how are we supposed to go on living in this world? He looks for his answer to the worlds colonised and oppressed, who have always lived according to a love that ‘cannot be acknowledged by the empire because it’s a people’s love for one another — ISABELLA HAMMAD One can hear that all-too-human disgust in Omar El Akkad’s words. However, what is more audible in his words is his determination to keep his faith in humans. Only those who can write with such rage and love will give a heart to a heartless world. His poetic voice, with its elegant power, can only come from those who are one with the world, with its joy and pain — ECE TEMELKURAN Is this the most urgent book you can read right now? Yes, it is.
Is this the most moral book you can read right now? It sure is.
Is this the most eye-opening book right now? Yep.
Is this the most needed book for our times? Absolutely — RABIH ALAMEDDINE