Name: American War
Rating: 3.801204819277109 (83 reviews)
ISBN: 9781101973134

Omar El Akkad

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.

American War

“Powerful . . . As haunting a postapocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy [created] in The Road, and as devastating a look as the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America. . . . Omar El Akkad’s debut novel, American War, is an unlikely mash-up of unsparing war reporting and plot elements familiar to readers of the recent young-adult dystopian series The Hunger Games and Divergent.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

While the premise of a dystopian world in which there was a second American civil war was very intriguing and promising, I did not enjoy this as much as I expected to. The prose was very dry and often told me more than it showed me. I didn’t particularly connect with any of the characters to the point where they will stick with me longterm. Additionally, I wanted the book to offer new and interesting commentary on our society, but it was really just a reimagined version of the first civil war. This was very character-driven, and I believe if I had gone into this novel knowing that, I would’ve increased the rating a smidge.

Nik ✨

Erin Peace

Gleich hier die kostenlose XXL-Leseprobe lesen! »American War« - das Buch der Stunde. »Ein gewaltiger Roman«, schreibt die renommierteste Literaturkritikerin der USA, Michiko Kakutani. Ein Roman über den nächsten amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg und das dramatische Schicksal einer Familie. Was wird sein, wenn die erschütternde Realität der Gegenwart - Drohnenangriffe, Folter, Selbstmordattentate und die Folgen von Umweltkatastrophen - mit aller Gewalt in die USA zurückkehrt? Vor diesem Hintergrund entfaltet Omar El Akkad mit großer erzählerischer Kraft den dramatischen Kampf der jungen Sarat Chestnut, die beschließt, mit allen Mitteln für das Überleben zu kämpfen. »American War« ist in den USA ein literarisches Ereignis, das schon jetzt mit Cormac McCarthy »Die Straße« und Philip Roth »Verschwörung gegen Amerika« verglichen wird.

Roman

Celeste Richardson

Full review now posted!

Sometimes, a book hits you at exactly the wrong moment. In my case, that’s exactly what happened with American War. My lack of love for this book is definitely a case of “it’s not you; it’s me,” and that is in large part due to the timing.

This was a very good book objectively. It was beautifully written, well-researched, poignant, and plausible. But subjectively, I couldn’t get far enough past the sadness that said plausibility invoked within me to enjoy anything about the book. The plot was heavy stuff, and wasn’t meant to be enjoyed. But even in horribly sad books, I can usually find something to appreciate, whether that’s the prose, the characterization, the setting, or even the cautionary tale being presented. I just couldn’t do that with this book. 

There is so much going on in America right now. I started reading this book about two days before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, and was unable to pick it up again until the worst of it was past. My state has been decimated by hurricanes in the past, and watching that happen to our neighbor to the west was heartbreaking. (My thoughts and prayers are still with those Texans whose lives were forever altered by the storm.) In the future put forth by the author in American War, our coastline has been radically altered by hurricanes. Almost a third of Louisiana is underwater by the year 2075, and many other seaport cities along the coast have sank beneath the waves. And that’s just the setting. Can you see why this was hard for me to read when I picked it up?

While the storms are wreaking havoc on American soil, that’s not the end of our issues. There is so much infighting within these “United States” at the moment that a second Civil War doesn’t seem that impossible. Reading a book about a second American Civil War while our nation is so divided wasn’t a good move on my part. It’s hard enough maintaining optimism without adding such a plausible picture of a future war-torn America to the visions already plaguing my mind. Our strength is in our unity, and without that unity we will fall. I wish that we as Americans could love one another more than we hate any opinion that opposes our own. And I have faith that with God, anything is possible. But things look bleak, and I didn’t need the bleakness of this book added on top of that.

I just picked up this book at exactly the wrong moment. It’s not the book’s fault. This was a well-written look at a possible future for America if we can’t learn to forgive and live and let live. I can’t give it less than three stars, because it was excellently written and Sarat was a heartbreaking character. But I can’t give it more than three stars because it broke my heart and gave me no balm for the wound. Please understand that this is a highly subjective rating, and that I’m not trying to deter anyone from reading the book. But if you do decide to read American War, prepare your mind for a story that’s sad and almost unrelievingly bleak. May the prophecy held within these pages never come to pass, and may God bless America.

Original review can be found at Booknest.

This book could not have been written by a native American. It had to be written, but it had to be written by someone born and raised in another country. What he describes for a future America is what happens now, today, in other places. This book gives American readers the distance of the future in exchange for the distance of geography. To that end, it punctures the idea that American wars are special or different. They are the same as wars everywhere else, and no matter how noble an idea driving them may be, they are conducted in ways that make more enemies than they can possibly kill. Sarat is not motivated by Southern pride, by politics, power, ideology, fortune, religion, or anything else. She is motivated by the losses she suffers at the hands of others, and whatever caused those others to impose those losses does not matter. It takes a very talented and insightful piece of work to center a terrorist for 300+ pages (because her final choices are made known almost immediately), make her entirely relatable, make her profoundly sympathetic, and still make her an bad guy. In an age of anti-heroes, she is more of an anti-villain. If the anti-hero does good in spite of less-than-honorable motives, then here the anti-villain does bad because of purely honorable motives.
Amid all that, the swirl of political toxicity around her is all too real, all too discomfiting to see in print. Political speculative fiction may become a new and terrifying genre. This book sets a high bar for future entrants to clear, between the rooting in recent history, the combination of political, technological, and environmental realities, and the collapse of "it happens over there" into the American context, it is a compelling read.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: THE GUARDIAN, THE OBSERVER, NEW YORK TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE , THE WASHINGTON POST'American War creates as haunting a post-apocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in The Road, and as devastating a look at the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times2074AMERICA'S FUTURE IS CIVIL WAR.SARAT'S REALITY IS SURVIVAL.THEY TOOK HER FATHER.THEY TOOK HER HOME.THEY TOLD HER LIES.SHE DIDN'T START THIS WAR.BUT SHE'LL END IT.

Luke Kanies

A futuristic version of the classic “what would have happened if the confederacy had won?” exploration. Just like the old version, I’m not sure this needed to exist. I’m definitely sure it didn’t need to have a black woman as the protagonist and also as a terrorist by the end. It’s just bullshit.

This was an interesting setup, but it didn’t explore the hard questions or hard problems that that setup introduced.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

American War is a timely book as the divisions in US society seem to grow day by day with battle-lines often drawn in the same old places. There's an appetite for visions of how our apparent descent into conflict and intolerance might end and they are far from cheerful. American War envisions a USA once more torn apart, North against South with the South breaking away from the Union creating a new generation of sectarianism and bloodshed. With Nazi flags marching openly in the streets who's to say this is not the future, less a dystopia than a terrifying possibility. Unfortunately it is the details that are less convincing. The failure to address race or religion in any meaningful way is difficult to understand. Considering how central these themes continue to be in contemporary US events this is a glaring omission that doesn't sit well, it seems vastly unlikely that a second civil war would be ignited by environmental issues (and the idea of the US being a world-leader in finally abandoning fossil fuels is frankly laughable) without the churning morass of these issues being incorporated into the narrative. Considering that el Akkad makes the choice to frame his main character as part-Latino and part-African-American and highlights the poverty and uncertainty of their position it leaves a yawning hole that suggests that it was too difficult to address but is also impossible to ignore.
That being said while the cause of the new conflict may be on shaky ground and it may turn a blind eye to the glaringly obvious the rapid, almost-inevitable progression and escalation of the Second Civil War el Akkad describes is chillingly plausible. The clear-eyed, sensitive dissection of how how pain, loss and hated can forge anyone into a devastating weapon is both insightful and pertinent and it would have been even more powerful if it had been attached to a character one could connect with. Unfortunately, after the first few pages Sarat becomes elusive and difficult to reach. The barriers she builds are understandable within the story but they shouldn't exist between the character and the reader, at least not permanently. 

For the most part the complex structure is more of a stumbling block than an asset. The jumps in time confuse the story and often excise developments that it would have been better to experience at first-hand. The conceit of incorporating other excerpts of other sources to add context and detail is a popular one. Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace) and Hannah Kent (Burial Rites) both used real and fictional sources in their historical fiction with enormous effect and success in their historical fiction. When it works it lends great texture and depth to a story, its reality is more tangible but it works better when there is reality at the base already. Sadly, in this case, it just tangles and slows the plot, creating an illusion of complexity when really one of the main problems is that the premise of American War is not complex enough, or at least it doesn't evidence the complexity of its world effectively. For example, the political makeup of this late twenty-first-century world is quite different to our own but rather than an Orwellian world such as 1984 in which the composition of the nations and their relations was (and is) all too credible I found myself wondering several times just how these new nations and world-powers emerged. These muddy waters were frustrating hinting at such vast changes that are actually so integral to the plot without any convincing explanation severely weakens the structure of the story.

There is some lovely writing and the ideas are both compelling and worrying but ultimately the internal inconsistencies of the story and the world-building turn something that could have been groundbreaking into something quite frustrating.

Ben Nathan

Really excellent writing and ideas. Characters are full and intriguing. At the same time, I found that I hated many of the characters. It was by design but just a little too off putting to adore the book. Last point is that I have been suggesting it to many people, so it is great.

Jo H

#fuckathon 2019, fuck pollution prompt.

RTF.

Bryan Alexander

"Everyone fights an American war." (306)Do you know the experience of diving into a book expecting one certain thing, only to realize part-way through that the thing is actually about another subject? You assume X, but get Y?

That's how I read Omar El Akkad's recent novel American War. Everything I read described a near-future novel about a second Civil War, with the north and south tearing at each other once again. And the book does fulfill that promise. We follow a Louisiana family as members experience the horrors of civil war as children and adults, civilians and more active participants.

Yet around two-thirds of the way through I was losing patience. While the characters were convincing, the world-building kept failing to make sense. At first I ascribed this to the author's inexperience (it's a first novel) or unfamiliarity with science fiction. Then it hit me. American War is actually about the American war on terror. It's a metaphor, whereby the experience suffered by other nations, notably Iraq, transposes itself onto American soil.

I'm not sure that worked out well.

A little background: American War takes place in the 21st century's final quarter, after climate change has trashed North American coastal cities and devoured nearly all of Florida. Mexico has somehow claimed back parts of the southwest (this is never explained), the federal capitol is safely removed to Ohio, and the South secedes rather than give up carbon-based fuels. A quick conventional battle gives way to attenuated guerrilla warfare, including an occupation and biological warfare. In a nod to late 20th/early 21st-century political shorthand, the north (the feds) are the Blues, while the south are Reds.

The Chestnut* family comes from what is now coastal Louisiana. Of mixed race (Latino and black) they scrabble for existence, then relocate as a new bout of fighting draws near. Daughter Sarat is our main character and protagonist (yet not heroine), a strong and brutalized young woman who develops radically. The whole narrative is dotted with excerpts from historical documents, and framed by a future historian's reflections.

The writing can be lovely. The first chapter's second sentence: "The sun broke through a pilgrimage of clouds and cast its unblinking eye upon the Mississippi Sea." Lovely, and a neat bit of science fiction's transformed language. There's a fine and dark rebel's catechism, with an eye on Nechaeyev:What is the first anesthetic?
Wealth.
And if I take your wealth?
Necessities.
And if I demolish your home, burn your fields?
Acknowledgement.
And if I make it taboo to sympathize with your plight?
Family.
And if I kill your family?
God.
And God...
...Hasn't said a word in two thousand years. (136)
The novel can also draw a bead on official language's own voice, as when a suicide bomber becomes "an insurrectionist [who] detonated a homicide bomb" (30).

El Akkad is also good with references. I'm pretty sure the two characters named Weiland are references to Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland: or, The Transformation (1798), a horrific tale about manipulation and family horror. A training scene on 191 is clearly a nod to the exercises in Kipling's Kim (1901).

Above all, this is a fiercely emotional novel. Our point of view characters suffer terribly, and El Akkad brings their pain to us quite well. They also love and connect with people, a sweetness we can appreciate. Indeed, one penultimate scene involves an unlikely reunion of the sort Victor Hugo loved, and combines implausibility with tear-jerking pathos (322-6).

So how does this become an Iraq war novel? The world's technology averages to a historical level of around 2005. We do get hints of some kind of electric car and boat, but are otherwise working with gear from generations prior to what we should expect from 2080: drones ("Birds", 41), gas-powered trucks, tablet computers, and televisions, when the southern communities haven't fallen further back to pole barges, AC-less houses, and old school moonshine. The south is filled with semi-organized insurgent bands, rather than a unified army, and their weapons include roadside bombs, suicide bombing, and sniping. I must finish the answer in spoilers, alas - (view spoiler)[Sarat is taken to a remote Caribbean location and tortured in secrecy, along with a few dozen people similarly caught up. She's strong, but finally caves under waterboarding, although the text doesn't use that word. The Blues complete the conquest of the South with a "surge" (260). 
 In the final framing chapters the historian heads west to a desert country (321). Get it? (hide spoiler)]

It reminds me of the powerful 3rd season of Battlestar Galactica (2006-2007), which turns our sympathetic point of view characters into insurgents and suicide bombers ("We're evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go"). That was a fine act of science fiction imagination, especially as it occurred right during the occupation's most violent and unstable phase. The Avatar movie did something similar, if far less interestingly. El Akkad is following a similar rich path.

So why am I unhappy? Several reasons, beginning with missing big honking bits of Southern culture. Our heroine and her mother are black, while her siblings and father are Latino (40)... and this never comes up as a plot point. I'm sorry, but that makes no sense in the south, especially when characters, culture, and politics are trying so hard to recapture a pre-21st-century history. Having the family be nonwhite makes sense for the Iraq metaphor, but their racial presentation is simply unreal. 

Similarly, there's next to nothing said about religion. Which is just nuts, unless El Akkad thinks secularization will sweep the south in two generations. If so, he'd really have to lay out a plausible course, but doesn't. (I'm reminded of Neil Gaiman's weird neglect of Christianity in American Gods) . There's little mention made of religion's role in organizing people for defense or offense, which misses crucial elements of both the south and Iraq.

Along these lines the second Civil War's casus belli makes sense for the metaphor, but not American culture. It begins when the federal government outlaws fossil fuels, and four southern states rebel rather than comply. That's just strange. Of the states the novel focuses on, only Louisiana is that wedded to oil and gas (and that's not mentioned). Texas, now, is all about oil, but they are hand-waved out of the story (occupied by Mexico?). The big northern and western oil and gas states apparently go along with the post-carbon order. Yes, this connects to the role of oil in the American war in Iraq, metaphorically, but doesn't make for a plausible novel. 

Perhaps the novel's greatest strength is that it points to the future - not its own, but ours. The novel is very concerned with revenge. Its opening quotes are about retribution, and the plot about stoking resistance and action. The ultimate expressions of revenge are terrible. Perhaps El Akkad is advising us to look out for Iraq, along with other countries subjected to the war on terror, for another wave of wrath. 

Final notes: the novel begins with a page of lovely, perfectly detailed, and quite useful maps. Why can't more nonfiction books do this?

*I'm not sure if the name is supposed to evoke Charles Chesnutt, an early 20th century black writer. Does this illuminate the historian character? I don't know his work well enough to say. Anyone?

Nik Szymanis

Lindsay

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle. '[American War] creates as haunting a post-apocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in The Road" Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. Telling her story is her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during war - part of the Miraculous Generation - now an old man confronting the dark secret of his past, his family's role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others. A second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle - a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself. MORE PRAISE FOR AMERICAN WAR "A dystopian vision of a future United States undone by civil war and plague." Kirkus "An extraordinary novel." Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven "a work of a singular, grand, brilliant imagination ... a warning shot across the bow of the United States." David Means, author of Hystopia "[An] exciting debut . . . what sets this impressive book apart from other dystopian novels is the fully realised plausibility of the scenario El Akkad's created, the roots of which can be all too easily identified in the world around us today ... As diverting a read as this engrossing novel is, American War should no doubt also be read as a cautionary tale." Independent "[American War] creates as haunting a post-apocalyptic universe as Cormac McCarthy did in The Road, and as devastating a look at the fallout that national events have on an American family as Philip Roth did in The Plot Against America . . . El Akkad has written a novel that not only maps the harrowing effects of violence on one woman and her family, but also becomes a disturbing parable about the ruinous consequences of war on ordinary civilians." Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "American War is the most impressive new novel I've read this year. Set in a scarily plausible future scarred by civil strife and climate change, it's thrilling for the sheer transporting force of its storytelling. Its lasting power, though, lies in its complex account of moral disintegration, both individual and societal." Garth Greenwell, 'Best holiday reads 2017', Guardian

American War

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