![]() ![]() The Egyptian-Canadian writer’s celebrated dystopian debut, “American War” (2017), asks us to imagine the Middle East as a beacon of democracy and the United States wracked by internal strife and devastated by climate change. Two books into his career, Omar El Akkad has already proven himself a novelist of rare boldness and ambition. Scared by the workers in containment suits who are poking at bodies nearby, he bolts into a nearby forest. The opening pages of “What Strange Paradise” echo one of the indelible images of our times - except that where the real-life Alan Kurdi drowned when his boat capsized on the way from Turkey to the Greek island of Kos, the boy in the book recovers consciousness. A boy lies face-down on a beach, having washed ashore along with the bodies of other would-be refugees. ![]()
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