#omar el akkad
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You fight the war with guns. You fight the peace with stories.
Omar El Akkad, American War
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RECO OF THE WEEK!
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
Synopsis:
“More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vanna. Vanna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vanna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, Vanna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy.
In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir's life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.”
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Check out my review here.
Add this book to your TBR on Goodreads here.
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Have you read this book? Would you recommend it?
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Happy reading!
#books#bookish#booklr#bookworm#bookaholic#bibliophile#book blog#book blogger#Features#on books#on reading#read#reader#reading#book reco#reco of the week#recommendation#book recommendation#Omar El Akkad
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No book has ever hurt me as much as American War by Omar El Akkad, I’ve written two essays on it and just thinking about it for .2 seconds will make tear up… highly recommend
#I’ve been getting more traffic on my page so might as well give y’all a book recommendation 🤪#Omar el Akkad#American war#cli-fi#climate fiction#i just got one of my essays back and now I’m sad#got an A+ on it tho lmao#I’m actually quite proud of it#if you see this and want to read it I will provide a list of trigger warnings bc there’s a lot 😬#but it’s not gratuitous#it’s to show the horrors of war not for like… creepy reasons or plot
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The west you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them because your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in this world are not good and bad, they are engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be fuel.
What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad
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My Guilty Pleasure: Eating Garbage Food in the Middle of the Night
The late nights are mine alone, and I’ll spend them however I damn well please
On the northeast side of Portland is a pastry shop called Pix Patisserie. During the early days of the pandemic, when Pix was struggling to respond to restrictions, the owner had the idea to install a pair of dessert vending machines in the front courtyard. Today, these semi-brutalist things are probably responsible for most of Pix’s sales. They’re accessible twenty-four hours a day. If you feel like it, you can go there just before dawn, feed a machine $12 (US), and watch the sun rise while eating a chocolate mousse contraption named—brace yourself—Un Fantôme, Un Couteau, Une Nuit.
Maybe there are better ways to spend your time. I doubt it, though.
Read more at thewalrus.ca.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick (melanielambrick.com)
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What Strange Paradise
I had such resolve to blog this one quickly because I had thoughts on the ending, but December, man, is just too much between gastro illnesses and parades and who’s turn is it for the chocolate calendar.
Onwards we go, regrets about time aside: Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise oscillates its chapters between two perspectives one of the young boy Amir, who is the sole survivor of a…
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What Strange Paradise (2021) by Omar El Akkad
#omar el akkad#what strange paradise#moshe's thoughts#book excerpt#my worst scan yet. trying to figure out a better system OTL
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finishing american war felt like having my heart ripped out, stomped on, and shoved back into my chest. the most perfectly bleak ending to a book that so perfectly encapsulates the miserable, pointless, and unending violence of colonialist wars on a burning planet.
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What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
While it didn't make the top three in the #CanadaReads2022 debates, this story is well worth reading.
#bookreview #refugeecrisis #OmarElAkkad #whatstrangeparadise
4/5 stars.ebook, 236 pages.Read from March 20, 2022 to March 24, 2022.
“The West you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them…
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#4 stars#boat people#canada reads#Canada Reads 2022#fiction#middle east#migrant crisis#Omar El Akkad#refugees#tareq hadhad#war#what strange paradise
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Omar El Akkad's forward to the Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (trans. Yasmine Seale)
#book club tag#thought about making a book club side blog. but actually. i will keep it here but i'll keep the prev tag as it's dedicated tag#also the joy of reading and finding beautiful turns of phrases is 90% of why i include citations in much of what i post#and i want to pass that happiness on to whoever might find a similar delight in reading it. you know?? sometimes i don't have art#to go with it. i just really! loved what something had to say! i got nothing else to add! anyway. book club tag. will be the tag for this#also this is like. GOD. this is thee creative statement of the century. the drive to tell stories. i love!! this forward!!!!!!!!#i was listening to the Something Rotten spoilercast episode about Alan Wake 2 and I'm OBSESSED with everything they had to say#about how this is a game that's very aware of the creative process. it is!!!!! IT IS!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!#this is. poetry to me. i will be turning this around in my head and also chewing on AW2 forever
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Check it out - Haymarket Books has a free collection of essays about Gaza. Description from the site:
In the final months of 2023, as this ebook is published, Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Israeli officials have repeatedly made their intentions to do so extremely clear; talking of collective punishment, mass murder, and ethnic cleansing in newspapers, at press conferences, and on television. All the while, European and American states have continued to support Israel, to claim its murderous campaign is justified self-defense, and to send weapons, troops, war boats, and spy planes. While Western governments have supported the unjustifiable, or spoken inane words of condemnation while failing to take any concrete action, millions around the world have poured into the streets to denounce their complicity, to demand a ceasefire and a free Palestine.
From the River to the Sea collects personal testimonies from within Gaza and the West Bank, along with essays and interviews that collectively provide crucial histories and analyses to help us understand how we got to the nightmarish present. They place Israel’s genocidal campaign within the longer history of settler colonialism in Palestine, and Hamas within the longer histories of Palestinian resistance and the so-called “peace process.” They explore the complex history of Palestine’s relationship to Jordan, Egypt, and the broader Middle East, the eruption of unprecedented anti-Zionist Jewish protest in the US, the alarming escalation in state repression of Palestine solidarity in Britain and Europe, and more. Taken together, the essays comprising this collection provide important grounding for the urgent discussions taking place across the Palestine solidarity movement.
With contributions from: Reda Abu Assi, Asmaa Abu Mezied, Tawfiq Abu Shomer, Khalil Abu Yahia, Dunia Aburahma, Spencer Ackerman, Hil Aked, Yousef Al-Akkad, Jamie Allinson, Hammam Alloh, Riya Al’Sanah, Soheir Asaad, Tareq Baconi, Rana Barakat, Omar Barghouti, Sara Besaiso, Ashley Bohrer, Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, Nihal El Aasar, Mohammed El-Kurd, Sai Englert, Noura Erakat, Samera Esmeir, Rebecca Ruth Gould, Toufic Haddad, Adam Hanieh, Khaled Hroub, Rashid Khalidi, Noah Kulwin, Saree Makdisi, Ghassan Najjar, Samar Saeed, Reema Saleh, Alberto Toscano, and Eyal Weizman, alongside a number of Palestinian writers published pseudonymously.
Published in collaboration with Verso Books
Cover design: Tom Greenwood
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So I’ve finally finished season 4 of Clone Wars! Since the episode order is mostly lining up with the chronology, I can put my thoughts down into something resembling organized.
Mon Cala arc
-can that prince please not pronounce his own homeworld’s name like that? he calls it moan cala and i hate it
-it wasn’t necessary for the plot to work, but I’m curious about the history between the cala and the quarren. i wish we got some more details on why relations are tense
-the animators were clearly out of their depth (ha) with the setting. some parts felt like they didn’t know how to translate the usual fighting to an aquatic setting
-the story was satisfying, but I doubt this is anyone’s favorite set of episodes
-i can feel the gungans growing on me. not sure how I feel about that
Shadow Warrior
-how dare this show make gungans tolerable. coming into my home and making me okay with jar jar fucking binks
R2 and C3P0 duology
-some fun moments!
-would show it to my young cousins but at my age, it goes on a little too long. I’m not looking for/expecting deep meditations on war (American War by Omar el Akkad if that’s what you are interested in), but this is more in the kids show category than the family show one most episodes fall under
Umbara arc
-this is what I mean by being a family show vs a kids show
-I love this arc
-and Rex really gets fleshed out as a character in this one
-i didn’t get why people hated krell so much. i get it now. he’s like the umbridge of Star wars
-the tech designs for umbara and umbaran tech are pretty slick, i hope they get a cameo in live action some day
-the krell twist was. okay ig? it comes out of nowhere a bit. sure, he’s very strict on protocol and has a bone to pick with clones, but it’s said explicitly, more than once, that he gets results as a commander (paid for in casualties, but still successful). him being a relentless opportunist gets away from the clone thing, and i think digging into that could have been really interesting
Zygerrian Slave Empire
-hm
-not fond of the orientalist imagery in this one. won’t elaborate. i’ll say it’s personal for me and leave it at that
-how Anakin’s history as someone who was once literally enslaved should have been explored more
-this arc has its redeeming moments, but it also has a lot of wasted potential
-I might make a more in depth post someday, I have a lot of half formed thoughts about this one
Friend in Need
-this was a rewatch for me, I saw it when I was getting Mandalorian context for the Grogu and his working single father show
-I notice now that except for Bo Katan, deathwatch is all male. and to me, were implied to be sexually abusing the local women (the village leader mentions them having “taken” their women) maybe that’s what was meant by that infamous “they all died off years ago” re: exile of the warriors. no women, no offspring.
Crisis on Naboo arc
-ooh, I wish we get some more time on how Anakin was affected by Obi Wans faked death
-man, cad bane looks stupid without his hat. cover up that dome baby boy, you aren’t ventress, you cant pull the bald look off
-cad bane saving kenobi/hardeen in the Box. he’s a bad guy all right, but he isn’t entirely without honor. love that trope
-and I love palpatine’s scheming! glad to see a senior citizen staying active and involved
Ventress/Savage Oppress/Maul arc
-i love Assaj Ventress so much it’s unreal
-idc that the nightsisters are on the dark side. i love sisterhoods, i love witches, i love covens, it broke my heat to watch the separatists massacre them. at least mother talzin is still alive.
-i have so much Feeling for ventress. betrayed and abandoned again and again only to lose her sisters, and to feel like it’s her fault
-saving that girl from a forced marriage… ventress I love you.
-they should have let maul keep the spider legs, they looked cool
-I didn’t get the obsession with maul. I don’t really share it, but I do get it now. the raw drive for vengeance, his madness. I’m looking forward to where the writers take him
-obi wan and ventress are a great combo, their dialogue has a lot of chemistry
#star wars#text#star wars clone wars#ahsoka tano#death watch#mandalorian#anakin skywalker#obi wan kenobi#assaj ventress#darth maul#savage oppress#rako hardeen#cad bane#sheev palpatine#captain rex#umbara arc#jar jar binks#Naboo#long post#pong krell#my posts
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My top ten reads of 2022
Memoirs
🌼 Head Above Water by Shahd Alshammari
🌼 The Return by Hisham Matar
🌼 How I Survived a Chinese ‘Re-Education Camp’ by Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Rozenn Morgat, translated by Edward Gauvin
Fiction
🌼 Discretion by Faïza Guène, translated by Sarah Ardizzone
🌼 What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
🌼 As Long As the Lemon Trees Grow by Zoulfa Katouh
🌼 No Land to Light On by Yara Zgheib
Short Stories
🌼 Shatila Stories published by Peirene Press, nine contributors: Omar Khaled Ahmad, Nibal AlAlow, Safa Khaled Algharbawi, Omar Abdellatif Alndaf, Rayan Mohamad Sukkar, Safiya Badran, Fatima Omar Ghazawi, Samih Mahmoud, Hiba Mareb. Translated by Nashwa Gowanlock
🌼 Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
🌼 The Sea Cloak and Other Stories by Nayrouz Qarmout, translated by Perween Richards
#bookblr#translated literature#short stories#memoirs#contemporary fiction#ya fiction#arab literature#favorite books#book recommendations#book reccs
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hmmm alex garland doing a speculative historical fic movie called Civil War abt a new civil war... when Omar El Akkad's American War is right there....ready for a film adaptation if someone wanted to do it....
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• The places in which our stories took shape will become entirely changed, and the changes will birth new stories, a new telling of forgotten pasts -- ghost towns rising out from the bottom of vanishing lakes, secret histories written into the rings of severed trees. In this moment of monumental import, this apex of a turn beyond which lay our survival or eradication, climate change is going to render our past as unrecognizable as our future. —Omar El Akkad
Literary Hub
Literary Hub (at Internet Archive)
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