![]() ![]() The story begins with a shipwreck off a Greek island and the haunting, familiar image of bodies washed up on a beach. I haven’t loved a book this much in a long time. Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves to be an instant classic. It’s a similarly grand canvas of geopolitics, nativism and climate change, but this time, instead of unfurling a sweeping multigenerational epic, El Akkad keeps his plot and focus tight. ![]() In his new novel, “What Strange Paradise,” he draws this dystopia even closer to reality (and Western comfort zones), setting his narrative against actual events: the wars and revolutions of the Middle East and the migrant crisis that followed. In his first novel, “ American War,” Omar El Akkad upended the world order with a long-running civil war in a future America, precisely describing the violence and miseries he had witnessed as a reporter covering Afghanistan, Guantánamo and the Arab Spring for The Globe and Mail in Canada. ![]()
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