ROOM NUMBER
0D16          

Omar El Akkad

Visiting Fellow

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for Young Journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. His second novel, What Strange Paradise, released in July 2021 was named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and several other publications. His nonfiction debut, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, described by the publisher as “a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values,” will be released in February 2025.