WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE PALESTINE BOOK AWARDS

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today. As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West offered freedom and justice for all. Over the past twenty years he reported on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more. He won awards for his journalism and his fiction. But now, watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he comes to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

This powerful book is a chronicle of Omar’s painful realisation, a moral grappling with what it means – as a citizen, as a father – to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times. This is a book for those that have tired of moral emptiness. This is a book for everyone who wants something better.

We are very excited to welcome Omar El Akkad to The Station to discuss his defining book on the destruction perpetrated in Gaza by Israel with the backing of the West. He will be in conversation with Ramita Navai. Tickets cost £10 and include £2 off the book. We will not be able to serve drinks at the venue so we recommend getting one in advance or bringing water with you. Presented by bookhaus.

This event is in partnership with The Nerve, A new independent media title covering culture, politics and tech.

The Nerve is a fearless, female-founded media title set up by a collective of five former Guardian and Observer journalists who believe that the UK needs more truly independent journalism.

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 in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world.

Ramita Navai is a BAFTA, double Emmy and double Robert F. Kennedy award-winning British-Iranian investigative journalist, documentary maker and author.

“It is difficult to understand the nature of a true rupture while it is still tearing through the fabric of our world. Yet that is precisely what Omar El Akkad has accomplished, putting broken heart and shredded illusions into words with tremendous insight, skill and courage. A unique and urgently needed book”
Naomi Klein

“Urgent, essential, and profound. A lightning bolt - sets fire to our comforting lies, and illuminates a way forwards”
Riz Ahmed

“A startling, shocking, beautiful and essential book”
Brian Eno

“Part elegy, part rallying cry, this magnificent book should, and will, be required reading for future generations trying to reckon with one of humanity’s darkest chapters”
TÉa Obreht

“If you cannot fathom the scale and savagery of the genocide against the Palestinian people, if you feel the world is smashed off its axis and you feel profoundly alone, profoundly mad, then read this clear, elegant and devastatingly truthful account of why you are not mad, and not alone; read this shatteringly honest book by a great writer who also cannot reconcile those things, but is - on behalf of us all, and with his whole soul - trying”
Max Porter