American War (novel)

American War

Author	Omar El Akkad
Country	United States of America
Language	English
Genre	Fiction, science-fiction
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	4 April 2017
Media type	Print (Softcover)
ISBN	978-1-5098-5220-8

American War is the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in a near-future United States of America in which a second civil war has broken out over the use of fossil fuels. The story is told by Benjamin Chestnut about his aunt Sarat, and is told through narrative chapters interspersed with primary documents collected by the narrator.

Plot

In 2074, after the passage of a bill that bans the use of fossil fuels anywhere in the United States of America, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas secede from the Union, beginning a civil war. South Carolina is quickly incapacitated by a virus ('the Slow') that makes its inhabitants lethargic, and Texas invaded and occupied by Mexico, while the remaining states ('the Mag', an acronym of their names) continue to fight.

Sarat Chestnut, six years old when the war breaks out, lives with her family on the climate change-ravaged coast of Louisiana. Decades later, her nephew, a historian in New Anchorage, traces the family's story as they flee into the Mag to escape the advancing war.

Reception

In The New York Times, book critic Michiko Kakutani compared it favourably to Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America. She wrote that "badly melodramatic" dialogue could be forgiven by the use of details that makes the fictional future "seem alarmingly real".