![]() ![]() Told by a narrator who pieces together events that take place between 20, American War is not primarily a story about war but rather, as the narrator tells us, about ruin. yet the anonymous benefactors across the ocean in China and the Bouazizi Empire kept sending more.” Against a backdrop of devastation and destruction, such deftly observed incongruities make this reversal of fortunes on a global scale hauntingly palpable and plausible. Inhabitants of a refugee camp in Mississippi are inundated with blankets despite the sweltering heat: “there were more blankets than anyone knew what to do with. Figuratively: in the midst of a second Civil War, Americans in the secessionist Free Southern State find themselves more starkly than ever the subjects rather than masters of the global system. Literally: as a map at the beginning of the book vividly illustrates, by 2075, major portions of the US have been submerged by rising sea levels. ![]() Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War, envisions a twenty-first-century United States that has been literally and figuratively reshaped by such forces as the climate crisis and globalization. ![]()
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