American War - Omar El Akkad

Shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2018.

A post-apocalyptic novel like no other, set in an America riven by a second Civil War.

My favourite postcards are the ones from the 2030's and 2040's, the last decades before the planet turned on the country and the country turned on itself... A visual reminder of America as it existed in the first half of the twenty-first century: soaring, roaring, oblivious.

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.

Part dystopian vision, part thrilling war story, American War is a stark, visceral and breathtakingly ambitious debut. A former war correspondent, author Omar El Akkad brilliantly taps into the lasting legacy of the American Civil War on American identity, considering how individual lives are shaped by sectarianism and inherited loyalties. Turning the tables on East-West power relations, American War a gripping, page-turner of a novel that confronts the universality of war’s devastating cost on human lives.