One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, racism, and death.

Omar El Akkad was born in 1982 in Cairo, Egypt, and spent his formative years in Doha, Qatar. At the age of 16, he relocated to Canada, where he completed high school in Montreal before pursuing higher education at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. El Akkad earned a degree in computer science before transitioning to journalism.

El Akkad’s entry into journalism coincided with the beginning of the War on Terror in the early 2000s, and this would profoundly shape his professional trajectory and worldview. For a decade, he worked as a staff reporter for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s most prominent national newspaper. During this period, El Akkad established himself as a conflict correspondent, covering several significant global events including the NATO-led war in Afghanistan, military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, and the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. His journalism also extended to domestic issues in North America, including coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri.

El Akkad’s journalistic work earned him multiple prestigious accolades, including Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Investigative Reporting for his coverage of a 2006 terror plot, and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists. He also received three National Magazine Award honorable mentions, establishing his reputation as a meticulous and insightful reporter with a particular focus on conflict zones and human rights issues.

Building on his experiences as a journalist, El Akkad transitioned to fiction writing with his debut novel American War, published in 2017. The novel, which imagines a second American Civil War set in a dystopian future, draws from his firsthand experiences reporting from conflict zones. American War received widespread acclaim, winning the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in fiction. The New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani favorably compared it to works by Cormac McCarthy and Philip Roth, and in 2019, BBC News included it in its list of the 100 most influential novels.

El Akkad’s second novel, What Strange Paradise, published in 2021, further cemented his literary reputation. The novel, which examines the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child, won the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize and was selected for the 2022 edition of Canada Reads. It was also a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize and was named as one of the best books of 2021 by the Washington Post, NPR, and Buzzfeed, among others.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, published in 2025, marks El Akkad’s first venture into nonfiction. The book originated from a viral tweet he posted on October 25, 2023, just three weeks into the bombardment of Gaza. He wrote: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this” (Omar El Akkad. x.com, Oct 25, 2023). This statement, which garnered more than 10 million views, became the foundation for the book.

This book has become part of broader conversations about moral responsibility, Western foreign policy, and the role of writers during times of crisis. El Akkad has participated in numerous public discussions about the book, including events at the Seattle Central Library where he conversed with author Ijeoma Oluo about empire, resistance, and the obligations of writers to confront injustice.

El Akkad currently resides near Portland, Oregon, with his family. His work continues to meld journalism and literature, using both forms to examine displacement, violence, and moral complexity in contemporary global contexts. Through his three major works—American War, What Strange Paradise, and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This—El Akkad has established himself as a writer deeply concerned with human suffering, the failures of powerful institutions, and the possibilities for resistance and hope amid seemingly intractable conflicts.