American War

Starred review from February 20, 2017
El Akkad’s debut novel transports us to a terrifyingly plausible future in which the clash between red states and blue has become deadly and the president has been murdered over a contentious fossil fuels bill. In 2074, Sarah T. Chestnut—called Sarat—comes of age in the neutral state of Louisiana, where she is slowly drawn into the conflict after the death of her father, performing guerrilla operations for the South. Soon she is enmeshed in a resistance movement masterminded by the Dixie militants operating along the Tennessee River, venturing into quarantined South Carolina battlegrounds and Georgia shantytowns alongside spies, assassins, and revolutionaries, like the commanding Adam Bragg and his Salt Lake Boys. Sarat finds brief happiness with Layla, a displaced bar owner from Valdosta, Georgia, but this is only the beginning of Sarat’s war, as she is interred in the nightmarish Camp Saturday before being exiled in the wake of a devastating plague. Now an old and broken woman, Sarat must seek redemption in the wreckage of the New World. Part family chronicle, part apocalyptic fable, American War is a vivid narrative of a country collapsing in on itself, where political loyalties hardly matter given the ferocity of both sides and the unrelenting violence that swallows whole bloodlines and erodes any capacity for mercy or reason. This is a very dark read; El Akkad creates a world all too familiar in its grisly realism.

February 1, 2017
A dystopian vision of a future United States undone by civil war and plague.El Akkad's debut novel is set during the tail end of the 21st century, with the North and South at it again. Southern states have taken up arms to protest a Northern ban on fossil fuels, and the war-torn secessionist "Mag" (Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia) has forced civilians to herd in refugee camps. (South Carolina, attacked by a weaponized virus, is "a walled hospice.") Among the refugees is Sarat, who as a young girl in 2075 escaped a much-diminished Louisiana (climate change has swallowed the coasts) with her family to what seems like an endless occupation. But in the years tracked by the novel, Sarat becomes a daring young woman who leads a resistance against the Northern military. El Akkad, a journalist who's reported from hot spots in the war on terror, has a knack for the language of officialdom: news reports, speeches, history books, and the like that provide background for the various catastrophes that have befallen the country. And he's cannily imagined Sarat, who is at once a caring daughter and sibling, freedom fighter, and sponge for the wisdom of one old-timer who dispenses tales about occupations decades past. But above all, El Akkad's novel is an allegory about present-day military occupation, from drone strikes to suicide bombers to camps full of refugees holding "keys to houses that no longer existed in towns long ago deserted." He imagines this society in some creative ways: battles royal are major entertainments in an internet-free society, and Sarat's brother becomes an interesting and peculiar folk hero after he's injured. But El Akkad mainly means to argue that these future miseries exist now overseas. A well-imagined if somber window into social collapse.

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January 1, 2018

Benjamin Chestnut, a historian of the Second U.S. Civil War (2075-93), chronicles the life and times of his aunt Sarat. When he first meets her, she is a stoop-backed woman who hides in the shed behind his house, sleeps on the floor, and speaks to no one. When readers first meet her, she is a feisty six-year-old, ready to take on the world. And what a world it is: climate change has created sea rise that wiped out both U.S. coasts for miles inland, and searing heat burns the soil so that food must be brought in from foreign shores. Sarat is caught in the middle of a burgeoning war between the states, based on Northern demands that the South give up fossil fuels. This hardship breeds resentment, and violence seeps into Sarat's life. The girl's mother insists they leave their home in Louisiana for points north, but they make it only as far as the refugee camp at the border of the northernmost Southern state. Here, Sarat learns her cultural history from those who recruit her to serve the South. Interspersing the work with news, government reports, and interviews, Benjamin describes Sarat's growing resistance, willingness to fight fiercely, and subsequent capture and torture. Twenty years later, when Benjamin meets her, she is broken but unrepentant; Sarat serves up one last horrible act of revenge to ensure victory for the South. VERDICT Give this fascinating, terrifying dystopian novel to mature or politically or environmentally minded teens, who will undoubtedly connect events in 2017 with those of the 2070s.-Connie Williams, Petaluma High School, CAl

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2017
In 2074, the American South has once again attempted to secede from the Union, this time in ferocious opposition to the Sustainable Future Act, even as the ravages of global warmingsevere storms, prolonged drought, and a massive rise in sea levels cause waves of coastal refugees to pour into the Midwest as the federal government abandons deluged Washington, D.C., for Columbus, Ohio. The Chestnuts are getting by, living in an old shipping container in Louisiana, until Benjamin is killed in a bombing. Martina flees to a Mississippi refugee camp with her soon-to-be-rebel son, Simon, and twin daughters, fair and pretty Dana and dark, curious, and intrepid Sarat, the focus of this vigorously well-informed, daringly provocative speculative first novel by an Egyptian-born Canadian journalist. As Sarat grows into a six-foot-five, shaved-head warrior, she is radicalized by agents of a new Middle Eastern and North African superpower, the Bouazizi Empire. The war between Red and Blue is further compounded by raging plagues, while captured insurrectionists are tortured in a domestic Guantanamo. Catalyzed by his reporting on the Arab Spring; the war in Afghanistan; racial violence in Ferguson, Missouri; and environmental disasters, 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: El Akkad's explosive, darkly cautionary tale will be strongly promoted via a many-faceted marketing campaign and numerous national author appearances.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2016

In Egyptian-born, Canadian-based journalist El Akkad's debut novel, the second American Civil War has broken out, and six-year-old Sarat Chestnut is herded into a displaced persons camp with her family. There, a mysterious official begins training her to be a weapon of war. Owing to strong sales rep enthusiasm, this book is getting special treatment.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2017

Award-winning journalist Akkad's gripping and frightening debut novel takes off from current American political and environmental issues to imagine a bleak and savage not-too-distant future. During a long second American civil war, the Chestnut family, consisting of a mother, son, and twin daughters, are moved to a refugee camp in what's left of a region of Mississippi in the year 2081. There, one of the daughters, Sarat, grows into a strong and independent soul who is recruited by a shadowy operative to conduct missions against the northern borders. She assassinates a high-ranking leader of the North's military, leading to reprisals and her eventual capture. She is tortured by the North, then finally released and moves back south with her injured brother and his family. Later, she's offered the chance to perform one final deadly mission in order to sabotage the peace talks that are finally taking place between the two bitter enemy regions. VERDICT Well written, inventive, and engaging, this relentlessly dark tale introduces a fascinating character in Sarat. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2017

Award-winning journalist Akkad's gripping and frightening debut novel takes off from current American political and environmental issues to imagine a bleak and savage not-too-distant future. During a long second American civil war, the Chestnut family, consisting of a mother, son, and twin daughters, are moved to a refugee camp in what's left of a region of Mississippi in the year 2081. There, one of the daughters, Sarat, grows into a strong and independent soul who is recruited by a shadowy operative to conduct missions against the northern borders. She assassinates a high-ranking leader of the North's military, leading to reprisals and her eventual capture. She is tortured by the North, then finally released and moves back south with her injured brother and his family. Later, she's offered the chance to perform one final deadly mission in order to sabotage the peace talks that are finally taking place between the two bitter enemy regions. VERDICT Well written, inventive, and engaging, this relentlessly dark tale introduces a fascinating character in Sarat. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 10/24/16.]--James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.