American War of Omar El Akkad Review
The Egyptian-born American journalist Omar El Akkad makes us look in his debut novel “American War” in a bleak future. If his narrator writes down the story in a hundred years, it will no longer be the world power USA. The original community has then divided over environmental and other issues so that in 2074 the Second American Civil War broke out. The country was divided into three parts. The southeastern region where prevailed “the Reds”, split off as “Free South”. The southwestern strip of South Texas to California became a protectorate of Mexico (Take that, Donald!).
The “United States of America,” which was only of the rest in the north, ruled by “the Blue”. Their demand to renounce the last resources of fossil fuels and develop alternative energy sources instead, felt “the Reds” humiliating paternalism. Over two decades, the violent clashes devastated the country. On the day of reunification (in 2095) began southern rebel in the northern capital Columbus, Ohio, a pathogen from that brought for another decade of death and destruction upon the battered country.
Long before the outbreak of war climate change had taken its toll. Flat coastal areas, New Orleans and Florida, for example, were swallowed up gradually from the rising water of the oceans. Excessive heat and drought made whole regions uninhabitable. Where even nature itself plunged the people in need, they robbed the civil war, the last possessions. The once prosperous United States degenerated into an impoverished, depopulated country.
Other states have taken up the spaces that the decline of America has cleared.
![](https://paperap.com/wp-content/themes/theme/img-rh/star.svg")
5 (234)
“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”
China is the new global superpower. In the Middle East Fifth Spring revolution has driven the despot. North African countries have come together to form “Bouazizi Empire” and prosper finally in reasonably democratic structures. All these countries enjoy their prosperity, their wealth and their new role as a direct provider of needy Americans.
At the beginning of the war the situation in the “Free South” is particularly bad. They oppose vehemently all requirements of the government of the North, but does not create, maintain its own order. Red rebels through the country, hoarding weapons and threaten ordinary citizens who want nothing other than to live at least unmolested in their poverty. Who can and harassed political, trying to settle to the north, where one can hope for a peaceful life and where the food and health care is better.
On the surface, does not serve El Akkad dystopian design as a political warning to us today, but merely the setting for an exciting family adventure story. Whose heroine is Sara T. ( “Sarat”), daughter of the refugee family Chestnut, which is on its way north and lived through terrible.
But on the other hand, reminds us many details unequivocally to certain shortcomings of the present. In fact, the author pursues a more general intention. Appalled by the American policies that devastated the fight against terrorism with autocratic sense of mission vast tracts of distant lands, destroyed their political structures and civilian casualties has taken calmly into account, he wants to turn the tables and lead his countrymen in mind, as it were, when “God’s own country” the scene of uninhibited, controlled from afar war would .
the story tells Sarats story of an old man, who introduces himself in the prologue. He belongs to the “Generation of Miracles”, one of the few people who escaped through fortunate circumstances the ravages of the civil war, the terrorist attacks, the deadly disease. The age of six, he was abducted from his parents’ home in Georgia and taken to Alaska. He spent his entire adult life trying to study the chronicle of the terrible events that have plunged a thriving continent suffering and destruction. How and why he himself is involved in these relationships, he understands many years later.
The reader is no other way than the narrator. Although the prologue outlining the events of many decades ahead of referring, its full meaning only revealed at the end of the reading.
Despite the dire conditions, the six-year Sarat in 2075 is a happy child. With twin sister Dana, the older brother Simon and parents she lives in a dilapidated corrugated iron container in the Mississippi Delta. In a shed, they keep a few chickens, with a tarpaulin spanned catch rainwater. Winter storms and summer heat put to them, the fighting has destroyed their livelihoods. Life on the river is an adventure for the woken child, but the parents want to escape the misery and the looming threat of war.
When the father of a suicide attack red rebel is killed, the mother will take the last chance with her three children to escape the horror. A bus takes on dangerous strictly controlled route to a refugee camp on the Tennessee River, the border of three states. In through regulated, barren “Camp Patience” the small family arduous year spending.
Here is learning Sarat know a much older man who promotes one hand, mentally, her other hand whispers lies about atrocities of the “Blue” and so forming a living weapon of the red rebels. His seed has germinated, nearly wiping out as a dastardly massacre of “Blue” the entire camp: The girl becomes a murderer and mutated after years in a prison camp (reminiscent of Guantanamo) to the ugly, death-bringing avenging angel
contacting the more is the last part of the novel, in which a spark loving empathy flashes at Sarat. After years of solitary confinement and torture it is released into the wild. A human wreck that despises himself because they pressured many people – betrayed – even completely uninvolved. You want to have anyone contact.
Thirty Years versa Sarat to her brother back, who had survived the massacre seriously injured in “Camp Patience”. He is married and has a son who observes the strange bald aunt at every turn. She lives in a barricaded barn, sleeping on the bare ground, her body is covered with scars, and she talks to anyone. he can Sarat not understand, but he did like how they learn to appreciate the little curious boy.
Omar El Akkad science fiction reverses the political situation of our world order without the people would then become better and settled in his doomsday scenario of an extremely exciting plot a horrible one single destiny. Despite the gritty cruelty of some scenes is “American War” good fiction, make their references to our present thinking.
This book I have on the list Zu my 20 Lieblingsbüchern”
American War of Omar El Akkad Review. (2019, Nov 18). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/american-war-of-omar-el-akkad-my-review/
