Back from the Air-pocalypse with a Canadian authors burning brightly series. Omar El Akkad was born in Egypt, raised in Qatar, works as a journalist in Canada, and AMERICAN WAR (2017) is his debut novel. This dystopia opens 50 years from now after the outbreak of the second American Civil War (this time over fossil fuels and culture war -- not hard to imagine). Civilians in the South have been herded into refugee camps, and this is where we meet a young girl named SARAT with her mother, brother and sister grieving the loss of their father. She's a headstrong little girl, but as the book follows her over decades, we're witness to the suffering that war and occupation inflict; the anger and eventual radicalization that transforms Sarat into a leader in the resistance to the Northern military. What's brilliant about this book is the inverting of America's War On Terror. As a journalist in those war zones, El Akkad had all the background to do a novelized exploration of the loss and rad...