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El Akkad . . . has an innate (and depressingly timely) feel for the textural details of dystopia; if only his grim near-future fantasy didn’t feel so much like a crystal ball.
— Entertainment Weekly
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Astounding, gripping and eerily believable . . . masterful . . . Both the story and the writing are lucid, succinct, powerful and persuasive.
— Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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American War is a deeply unsettling novel. The only comfort the story offers is that it’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.
— New York Times Book Review
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Follow the tributaries of today’s political combat a few decades into the future and you might arrive at something as terrifying as Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War.
— Washington Post
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“El Akkad’s formidable talent is to offer up a stinging rebuke of the distance with which the United States sometimes views current disasters, which are always happening somewhere else. Not this time.”
— Los Angeles Times
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Striking . . . A most unusual novel, one featuring a gripping plot and an elegiac narrative tone.
— Boston Globe
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Powerful . . . If violence and conflict feel distant, journalist Omar El Akkad’s debut novel brings them home.
— GQ
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American War is an extraordinary novel. El Akkad’s story of a family caught up in the collapse of an empire is as harrowing as it is brilliant, and has an air of terrible relevance in these partisan times.
— Emily St. John Mandel, New York TImes bestselling aauthor
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El Akkad has created a brilliantly well-crafted, profoundly shattering saga of one family’s suffering in a world of brutal power struggles, terrorism, ignorance, and vengeance. American War is a gripping, unsparing, and essential novel for dangerously contentious times.
— Booklist (starred review)
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Terrifyingly plausible . . . Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Gripping and frightening . . . Well written, inventive, and engaging, this relentlessly dark tale introduces a fascinating character. . . . Highly recommended.
— Library Journal (starred review)
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Depicting a world uncomfortably close to the one we live in, American War is as captivating as it is deeply frightening.
— Buzzfeed.com
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“American War is terrifying in its prescient vision of the future.
— New York magazine
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“Terrifyingly plausible…Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“A brilliantly well-crafted, profoundly shattering saga of one family’s suffering in a world of brutal power struggles, terrorism, ignorance, and vengeance…Gripping, unsparing, and [an] essential novel for dangerously contentious times.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“An allegory about present-day military occupation…He imagines this society in some creative ways…A well-imagined if somber window into social collapse.”
— Kirkus Reviews