Transmitted below are the opening paragaphs of the NEW YORK TIMES report on last night's National Book Awards, those dealing with the award for nonfiction to Omar El Akkad's book One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This.
By coincidence, I have read this book today. It is only 187 pages and difficult to put down.
It is a magnificent book. It well deserves it award. I strongly recommend it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/books/review/omar-el-akkad-rabih-alameddine-national-book-awards.html
Books That Examine the Past and Present of the Middle East Take National Book Awards
Rabih Alameddine’s “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)” won in fiction, while Omar El Akkad’s reckoning with Gaza took the nonfiction prize.
Omar El Akkad’s “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” a brief, searing indictment of American and European responses to the devastation in Gaza, took home the National Book Award in nonfiction Wednesday night, one of three prizes awarded to writers of Middle Eastern origin who addressed the traumatic past and present of the region in their books and in their remarks.
El Akkad, an author and journalist, was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar and Canada and now lives in the United States. He wrote two novels previously.
“It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” El Akkad said in accepting the prize. “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body. It is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know that my tax money is doing this, and that many of my elected representatives happily support it.”