Canadian author Omar El Akkad’s debut nonfiction work shortlisted for U.S. National Book Award

Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is on the nonfiction shortlist for the U.S.-based award. The annual literary award program celebrates and honours authors for books published in the United States roughly during the award year.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against Us critiques the fractures of the western world

A man in a grey shirt in front of a blue wall

A bestselling memoir and manifesto by Canadian writer and journalist Omar El Akkad is among this year’s finalists for the U.S.-based National Book Award.

The U.S.-based annual literary award, valued at $10,000 USD (approx. 13,954.49 Cdn) is presented by the National Book Foundation for outstanding books in categories like fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature and young people's literature.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This marks Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer Omar El Akkad's nonfiction debut.

In the fall of 2023, shortly after the bombardment of Gaza, he posted a statement on social media: "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."

A red book with black text and a black silhouette image of a bomb falling toward a child.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This expands on his social media message and chronicles his thoughts on the nature of truth, justice, privilege and morality.

El Akkad is a Canadian journalist and author who currently lives in Portland, Ore. His novelAmerican War was defended on Canada Reads 2018 by actor Tahmoh Penikett. His novel What Strange Paradise won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was defended on Canada Reads 2022 BY Tareq Hadhad.

This week, the National Book Foundation announced five nominees in each of five competitive categories, narrowing longlists of 10 unveiled last month.

Megha Majumdar is a fiction finalist for A Guardian and a Thief, her first novel since her celebrated debut, A Burning, came out in 2020.

Other fiction nominees include Rabhi Alameddine’s The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother); Karen Russell’s The Antidote, her first novel since Swamplandia!, a Pulitzer finalist in 2012; Ethan Rutherford’s North Sun, and Bryan Washington’s Palaver.

The fiction authors set their work everywhere from India in the near future (Majumdar) to 1930s Nebraska (Russell) to contemporary Tokyo (Washington).

YiyunLi’s Things in Nature Merely Grow, a blunt and searching account of losing her two sons to suicide, is a nonfiction finalist, along with Julia Ioffe’s feminist history of Russia, Motherland; Claudia Rowe’s Wards of the State; and Jordan Thomas’ When It All Burns.

Winners will be revealed during a Nov. 19 dinner gala in downtown Manhattan.

Honorary awards will be presented to fiction writer George Saunders and author-publisher Roxane Gay.

– with files from CBC Books