Omar El Akkad, American War

 

- This novel by acclaimed journalist Omar El Akkad, who was born in the Middle East and raised in Canada and the US, is an extremely powerful condemnation of the warmongering character of America. His most recent book is the superb non-fiction work One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (which I reviewed here).

- Set in the future, in the years 2074-2095, it tells the story of the Second Civil War between the 'Blue North' and the 'Red South'. It depicts in graphic detail the ugliness and depravity of the conflict. 

- Its focus throughout is on personal and family relationships, and not on social realities in the future. There is nothing much on technology, no one has phones, there's nothing on the economy or global relationships, no mention of China or India. The only exception is the existence of a new nation in the middle east, a unity of all previous Arab nations. (No mention of Israel).

- But there are a lot of references to climate change. The weather, whatever the season, is unbearably hot with frequent and severe storms. Interestingly, while many US states are mentioned, the state of Florida is not. It's not on the map of the United States we're given in the opening pages of the book. We're to assume it simply disappeared by rising sea levels. 

- The causes of the new war are because the South vigorously resisted the Federal Government's decree to eliminate all ruinous fossil fuel corporations and government operations. All power is solar, including cars and trucks. 

- Ruins and decadence are everywhere, as is extreme poverty. We're confronted with the ugliness of authority and the military. It's also, in a serious way, anti-men. Men need wars because fighting is in their bones, fundamental to their nature. Women, on the other hand, mostly want peace and reconciliation, for the benefit of their children. The author is clear that this could be any war America has fought since its inception. 

- The principal character in the novel is the young woman Sara T. Chestnut, who goes by the name Sarat. She's strong, fierce and determined, and she fights for the South. She's African-American. 

- As the novel progresses we're taken on Sarat's journey and the family members and other characters she befriends during her life. She becomes highly respected in the Southern states and wanted by the North. She's a killer.  

- She is eventually captured and brutally tortured, but she survives and is freed when the war is officially over. But then she takes serious revenge. 

- The novel comes to a very satisfying resolution in the end. But it is still horrific. This is America after all. War is embedded in the national character. 

Colum McCann, Twist

 

- Colum McCann's novels are always worth reading. He tells big stories full of big characters and fills them with ruminations about virtually every dimension of humanity. Twist is no exception.  

- The story is told by Anthony Fennell, an Irish author and journalist who is researching an essay on undersea cables that link the entire world's internet and media communications. Unfortunately the cables are frequently snapped by vessels, debris, eruptions and earthquakes. Specialised boats staffed by a team of mechanics and technicians are always on call to locate and fix the broken cables. 

- A cable has snapped off the Congo in East Africa, downing the internet for virtually the entire African continent. A repair boat departs from Cape Town in South Africa, captained by John Conway, an Irish seaman and expert diver. He is highly respected by his team. But is Conway really who he proclaims to be? That mystery lies at the heart of the novel. 

- We are reminded of the the greed, the mining, and the plunder by the colonialists against the impoverished indigenous tribes of Africa. The discarded wires, for example, left abandoned by the repair boats are always melted down by the villagers to help them buy food. 

- After the Congo expedition is successfully completed Conway suddenly disappears, never to be found again. But we readers join him in Alexandria in Egypt, where he's posing as a local fisherman. He’s training himself in deep diving where he'll be able to hold his breath for long, ten minute or so, periods. He intends to bomb a number of cables using a thermite mixture. 

- And he’s successful. But then he disappears and no body is ever found.

- The media across the world widely covers these 'terrorist bombings', and five months later report that Conway's skeleton has been found washed up on a beach in Northern Libya. 

- There are other dimensions to the story: partners, lovers, and children particularly, that add richness and texture to it. 

- But, in the end, the question most readers will ask is: what on earth is the meaning of all this? What is Colum McCann's point? What, even, was Conway really on about? Why would the temporary destruction of the internet, of worldwide communication systems generally, be anything more than an insane and petty act of revenge? An anti-colonialist gesture? Sure, OK, but...

- An enjoyable tale, but it's just adventure writing. That's about it. 

Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

 

- This is an extraordinarily powerful book. Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives as a US citizen in the United States. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world. 

- It is beautifully written in often poetic prose. He focuses on the abject racism and colonialism of the West. His prime focus is today's genocide taking place in Gaza, but he also digs deep into the many issues over the last few decades that have defined the anti-Arab character of much of what the West, led by the US, has done. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the disgrace that is Guantanamo Bay are central.

- The concept of 'terrorism' is examined in depth. As an Arab he feels the abject racism constantly. The supposition is that if you're an Arab then you're probably a terrorist. 'Terrorism as a societal designation...is applied almost exclusively to Brown people.'

- One aspect of the book that impressed me was his hatred of the centrist Democrats, led by Biden, who continued to support Israel at every level as the genocide proceeded. Their vetoing of the UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire for example, their continued funding, the deliberate withholding of aid and destruction of infrastructure, the ordering of residents into 'safe zones' and then wiped out there. The same framing is always used: 'The barbarians instigate and the civilised are forced to respond. The starting point of history can always be shifted'. 

- Continuing to support the Democrats when they continue to support Israel’s genocide is morally wrong. It doesn't matter that the Republicans might be worse. What matters is who you vote for. 'There is something stomach-churning about watching a parade of Biden administration press secretaries offer sincere expressions of concern for Palestinians as the same administration bankrolls their butcher'. 

- He condemns the media and their management for demanding that 'the journalist cannot be an activist, must remain allegiant to a self-erasing neutrality. Yet journalism at its core is one the most activist endeavors there is. A journalist is supposed to agitate against power, against privilege. Against the slimy wall of press releases and PR nothingspeak that has come to protect every major business and government boardroom ever since Watergate. A reporter is supposed to agitate against silence...So instead, the coverage shifts to a flattened mode, listing claim and counterclaim, measuring the impact on poll numbers...Listing one position and then the other and letting the reader make up their own mind fails entirely..' 

- El Akkad's chapters on the cascade of institutional gutlessness in the arts and higher education worlds are superb. The same thing is happening in Australia, as we know. 'There are young people all over the West  risking expulsion and defamation, risking their livelihoods, their entire careers, to protest the killing. There are Jews being arrested on the streets of Frankfurt, blocking Grand Central Station in New York, fighting for peace. There are indigenous communities who have suffered the Western World's most unspeakable atrocities and still find the will to stand up for an occupied land on the other side of the planet, who recognise a thing for what it is.'   

- An honest, personal, radical assessment of the Western world's sick and violent behaviour over the generations. An essential and inspiring read. 

Diana Reid, Signs of Damage

 

- Prize-winning Australian author Diana Reid's third novel once again focuses on personal and family relationships and their intricate dynamics. She takes a microscope to her main characters and is relentless at examining them in detail. In this novel she explores the legacies of broken families, abandoned children, and sexual abuse. She digs deep but does it with extreme subtlety and compassion. 

- The book becomes, as it proceeds, more of a murder mystery than anything else. An intriguing one, right to the end. If 'end' is the appropriate word.  

- The chapters alternate between what happened in 2008, and what's happening now in 2024. Abuse in France in 2008 and the longterm effects still felt in 2024. 

- The main character Cass was trapped in an old icehouse on the grounds of a large villa in France when she was thirteen. The door closed after her and she was imprisoned in the small dark place for three hours. Later in life she started to suffer frequent seizures, which could have been epilepsy, or something else, perhaps a neurological reaction to abuse. Psychosomatic, in other words. 

- The other main character is Anika, Cass's long time friend. She was also groped in the icehouse during the same holiday in 2008. She's a delightful character, rebellious but a thinker. 

- Who was the perpetrator? 

- Reid tells the story in sometimes dense prose, and too frequently bogs the reader down in psychological analysis, nevertheless we're totally sucked in. So as it proceeds the novel becomes unputdownable. 

ReplyForward Add reaction

Jeremy Cooper, Brian

 

- This is a delightful story of a sad, lonely, middle-aged man who gets hooked on movies. He sees a movie every night at the British Film Institute. His favourite movies are Japanese, but as the years progress he becomes an expert on quality films, their directors, producers and actors. He joins a small group of film buffs who talk each night about the movies they've seen, and becomes friendly with Jack, another isolated man living alone. Jack is fascinated by musical scores.  

- Northern Irish by birth, Brian has lived and worked in London all his adult life, and has always been estranged from his family. His father died when Brian was a baby and his mother abandoned him. He's never been in an intimate relationship, and has never had sex. He works as a clerk at the local council, and doesn't like any of his co-workers, and they return the favour. Apart from his boss who sees him as a dedicated worker.  

- He goes to a local Italian restaurant each day for lunch and always has the pasta special. Lorenzo, the owner, and his wife and family treasure him as a customer and he is attracted to them. 

- One thing I really loved about this novel is the dozens of familiar movies that are dissected by Brian and the buffs each night. I've seen most of them over the years and agreed with most of their insights. French, Italian and German directors, as well as Japanese, are a prime focus. 

- And there's this: The buffs...were driven to neurotic distraction by the mid-film munch of a Mars Bar or, worst of all, the maddening crinkle-crunch of a packet of crisps. My pet peeve too!

- Jeremy Cooper has written a wonderful book. It's only 180 pages long but it's packed with insight and beautifully written. 

- I must end with this:

The principle of good behaviour had always mattered to Brian. Certain conduct he condemned as bad manners, thoughtless. Like being any more than a minute or two late for an appointment. Brian incessantly worried about failing to arrive on time, for anything, anywhere, and for safety's sake wore a watch on either wrist in case one went wrong - though the benefit, he admitted, was marginal as he had no means of knowing, if they differed, which of them was accurate. One of the few things which made him demonstrably angry was a latecomer to the cinema pushing by and blocking his view of crucial early shots of a movie. He had been known to refuse to get to his feet to let people pass and had twice written to the Chief Executive of the BFI to plead for the cinema's doors to be barred from entry once a film was in progress.

Han Kang, We Do Not Part

- This newly translated novel by 2024 Nobel prizewinner Han Kang is a frequently strange but in the end mesmerising tale of death, vulnerability, and the savagery of war. I'm a great fan of Kang, having read two of her previous novels The Vegetarian and Greek Lessons. She's a savage critic of South Korea, her home country, laying bare its misogyny, social conservatism, and ugly political history. 

- Under Japanese occupation until 1945, and then torn apart by the war between America and Russian-supported North Korean communists from 1950-1953, the scars run so deep in so many citizens that the effects are still profoundly felt decades later. Hundreds of thousands of citizens were brutalised and executed by the police and military forces of Japan, America and North Korea. 

- Kyungha, a writer, lives alone. She was a former journalist but now she barely survives in a non air-conditioned, dilapidated apartment. She's isolated and lonely, and eats little. Any meaning in her life seems to have evaporated. We soon learn why. She suffers from vivid dreams and nightmares, as well as harsh migraines.

- She has one real friend Inseon, who was a photojournalist and is now a carpenter. She made documentaries, one featuring an old woman who fought the Japanese in the 1940’s, and escaped a shower of bullets. Inseon also lives alone in the island of Jeju, south of the mainland, with only two budgies to keep her company. When Kyungha visits Jeju on her friend's request to look after her surviving budgie for a month she finds the bird dead. 

- It's winter and it's constantly snowing and bitterly cold. Snow buries, an apt metaphor for a land of ugly secrets. There are black tree stumps littering the landscape. Also suggestive of the dead.  

- This is not an easy novel to read. Structurally, it meanders over time frames, leaving the reader confused, and there's a constant meshing of reality and dreaming. Yet, in a way, this is Kang's point. What is real? Is it the snow, or is it what's underneath? Why hide the ugliness? 

- Like Kang's other novels, We Do Not Part (there is so much meaning in that title) is a powerful whack in the stomach. In today's war-torn world it's an awakening. 

Pankaj Mishra, The World After Gaza

 

- This new book by celebrated Indian political essayist Pankaj Mishra is a masterpiece. It is so incredibly enlightening, thought-provoking and challenging. It's a reflection on Israel’s transition to a right wing, genocidal state over the decades.  

- It's full of quotes from major Jewish activists, politicians, thinkers and writers wrestling with the challenges the Jews faced after the Holocaust. The writings of Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Jean Amery, James Baldwin and many others are examined in depth. They convey deep insights into the struggles and debates over the last century after the founding of Israel.  

- The blurb on the dust jacket describes the book well:

The world after Gaza takes the war in the Middle East, and the bitterly polarised reaction to it within as well as outside the West, as the starting point for a broad re-evaluation of two competing narratives of the last century: the West's triumphant account of victory over Nazi and communist totalitarianism, and the spread of liberal capitalism, and the global majority's frequently thwarted vision of racial equality. At a moment when the world's balance of power is shifting and a long-dominant Western minority no longer commands the same authority and credibility, it is critically important to enter the experiences and perspectives of the majority of the world's population.  

As old touchstones and landmarks crumble, only a new history with a sharply different emphasis can reorientate us to the world and worldviews now emerging into the light. In this concise, powerful and pointed treatise, Mishra reckons with the fundamental questions posed by our present crisis - about whether some lives matter more than others, why identity politics built around memories of suffering is being widely embraced and why racial antagonisms are intensifying amid a far-right surge in the West, threatening a global conflagration. The World After Gaza is an indispensable moral guide to our past, present and future.