One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

By (author) El Akkad, Omar
Short description/annotation:
The debut non-fiction book from the award-winning novelist and journalist unpicks the hypocrisy and injustices of the West at a volatile and shocking time
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.

Review quote:
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
Review quote:
Urgent, essential, and profound. A lightning bolt - sets fire to our comforting lies, and illuminates a way forwards
Review quote:
A startling, shocking, beautiful and essential book
Review quote:
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
Review quote:
If you cannot fathom the scale and savagery of the genocide against the Palestinian people, if you feel the world is smashed off its axis and you fell profoundly alone, profoundly alone, profoundly mad, then read this clear, elegant and devastatingly truthful account of why you are not mad, and not alone; read this shatteringly honest book by a great writer who also cannot reconcile those things, but is - on behalf of us all, and with his whole soul - trying
Review quote:
One Day is passionate, poetic and sickening. It is full of well-earned rage, frustration with those who need this morality to be spelled out . . . It is an important book, a must-read, if only for the reminder that history always comes down to one simple question: "When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?"
Review quote:
Omar El Akkad''s One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This is . . . exceptionally powerful, as a howl of rage and grief against the status quo must be . . . there is no mistaking the urgency of the questions he asks about the asymmetry of global power, the myopia of western journalism and the costs of not holding both to account. This is a book that many will take issue with, and most will find uncomfortable, which makes it even more important. Discomfort, as he points out, is a luxury
Review quote:
If we, as humans, are lucky enough, we will someday be ashamed of ourselves for what is happening in the world today before our eyes. Some of us can already see that day and are deeply disgusted by the collective hypocrisy that waits until it is safe to shout out the crimes. It is not easy to write or talk when you feel that disgust; it chokes you and breaks your faith in humanity. 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