Omar El Akkad | |
---|---|
Born | 1982 (age 40–41) |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, author |
Omar El Akkad (born 1982) is an Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist, whose novel What Strange Paradise was the winner of the 2021 Giller Prize. [1]
Omar El Akkad was born in Cairo, Egypt, and grew up in Doha, Qatar. [2] When he was 16 years old, he moved to Canada, completing high school in Montreal and university at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He has a computer science degree. [3]
For ten years he was a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail, where he covered the war in Afghanistan, military trials at Guantanamo Bay and the Arab Spring in Egypt. [2] He was most recently a correspondent for the western United States, where he covered Black Lives Matter. [4]
His first novel, American War, was published in 2017. [5] [6] It received positive reviews from critics; The New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani compared it favourably to Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America . She wrote that "melodramatic" dialogue could be forgiven by the use of details that makes the fictional future "seem alarmingly real". [7] The Globe and Mail called it "a masterful debut." [8] The novel was named a shortlisted finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, [9] and for the 2018 amazon.ca First Novel Award, and won a Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. [10] [11]
In November 2019 BBC News listed American War on a list of the 100 most influential novels. [12]
In 2021, El Akkad appeared on the podcast Storybound . [13]
On November 8, 2021, El Akkad won the Giller Prize for What Strange Paradise . [14] The novel was selected for the 2022 edition of Canada Reads . It was defended by Tareq Hadhad. [15] The book follows migration and what is at the core of the global crisis. It follows Amir, a syrian boy who is the only survivor of a migrant boat sinking. [16]
In 2022, Omar El Akkad appeared on the podcast, The Literary City with Ramjee Chandran to talk about "What Strange Paradise."
He lives with his wife and daughter in Portland, Oregon. [20]
The Giller Prize, is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.
The Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, formerly known as the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, is a Canadian literary award presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada after an annual juried competition of works submitted by publishers. Alongside the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Giller Prize, it is considered one of the three main awards for Canadian fiction in English. Its eligibility criteria allow for it to garland collections of short stories as well as novels; works that were originally written and published in French are also eligible for the award when they appear in English translation.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Dennis Bock is a Canadian novelist and short story writer, lecturer at the University of Toronto, travel writer and book reviewer. His novel Going Home Again was published in Canada by HarperCollins and in the US by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2013. It was shortlisted for the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
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American War is the first novel by the Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in the United States in the near future, ravaged by climate change and disease, in which the Second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels.
David Demchuk is a Canadian playwright and novelist, who received a longlisted Scotiabank Giller Prize nomination in 2017 for his debut novel The Bone Mother.
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The Kobo Emerging Writer Prize is a Canadian literary award, presented since 2015 by online e-book and audiobook retailer and eReader manufacturer Rakuten Kobo.
Zalika Reid-Benta is a Canadian writer, whose debut short story collection Frying Plantain has been nominated and won numerous awards. The book is a collection of linked short stories centering on the coming of age of Kara Davis, a young Jamaican-Canadian girl growing up in the Eglinton West neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario.
Five Little Indians is the debut novel by Cree Canadian writer Michelle Good, published in 2020 by Harper Perennial. The novel focuses on five survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system, struggling with varying degrees of success to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, British Columbia after the end of their time in the residential schools. It also explores the love and strength that can emerge after trauma.
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Aimee Wall is a Canadian writer and translator from Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland and Labrador, whose debut novel We, Jane was longlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize and the 2022 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
What Strange Paradise is a novel by Canadian writer Omar El Akkad, published in 2021 by Penguin Random House. The novel centres on Amir, a young boy from Syria who has survived the sinking of a ship that was carrying him and other refugees, and his developing bond with Vänna, a teenage girl who resides on the island where Amir washed up after the shipwreck.
Menaka Raman-Wilms is a Canadian writer, whose debut novel The Rooftop Garden was longlisted for the 2023 Giller Prize.
Omar El Akkad's American War is the most recently published Canadian novel on the BBC's list. The journalist's debut book came out in 2017 and won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for fiction, a $10,000 award. It was also featured on Canada Reads 2018, when it was defended by Tahmoh Penikett.