A review by meha
American War by Omar El Akkad

challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 

What a beautiful, ugly book. It was recommended to me by someone who said it reminded them of the Parable of the Sower. I get it and I agree- none of the violence or political rhetoric or logical steps that Akkad uses is new or experimental. It is all just artfully relocated historical violence, just like in Parable of the Sower.  And those elements are relocated into an extremely plausible future scenario.

It is also an honest portrait of extremists, and done in a way that should make one question the oft repeated phrase “never negotiate with terrorists”. In American War, the terrorist make perfect sense- how could it not be this? The extremism happens in part through rhetoric and recruiting, and also through suffering and circumstance. The way in which the narratives and stories that are available to us shape what collapses from the field of all possibilities into the only “available options”. Reflecting on how the main character was recruited (into extremism) after suffering terribly as a refugee and a victim of war violence- one character said  “if the course of life doesn't require recruit her to the cause, no man will.” What an invitation to reconsider who/what is extremist in the present and change our responses accordingly?!

I can’t help but contrast Sarat with Lauren Olamina in Parable. How Lauren developers Earthseed and is brimming with imagination… and where did that come from that was lacking in Sarat’s childhood? At one point after Sarat has been captured, abused in prison for years, and then released, this operative from the North African empire says this: “I know how much you have fought and how much you have suffered. You want something the size of your vengeance, Sarat. This, I believe, is the size of your vengeance.” 

Here's another banger, about why this war was happening in the first place: “All these old men want it to be like it was when they were young, but it'll never be like that again. And. And they'll never be young again, no matter what they do. And it's not just ours that do that.

It's theirs too. Imagine if the north had just let us be. Imagine if they didn't fight us tooth and nail, kill all those innocent people just to keep us from having a country of our own and doing things our own way. Would it really have been so bad? No, of course it wouldn't. But it wasn't that away when all those old people that run everything were young. So they can't let it be. And you and I, and them too, we're young. And we ain't bound by what they're bound by…

Only thing they ever cared about was themselves. But us, we're of this place.” And then the guy she's talking to says, I'm not of this place. She's surprised and asks like, why are you fighting if you're not of this place? And the kid says, “I just wanted to be something.” And ain't that it? Old men who are trying to keep it like it was, and young men trying to be something.