NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK •
PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR
CRITICISM • From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning
with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values. "[A] bracing memoir
and manifesto." — The New York Times "I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to
read right now. I found hope here and help to face what the world is now all that it isn’t
anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it." —Tommy Orange bestselling author of
Wandering Stars and There There On October 25 2023 after just three weeks of the
bombardment of Gaza Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day when it’s safe when there’s no
personal downside to calling a thing what it is when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable
everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million
times. As an immigrant who came to the West El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A
place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years reporting on the War on Terror
Ferguson climate change Black Lives Matter protests and more and watching the unmitigated
slaughter in Gaza El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a
lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as
fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants but whoever falls outside the boundaries
of privilege. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that
painful realization a moral grappling with what it means as a citizen of the U.S. as a
father to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage. This is El Akkad’s
nonfiction debut his most raw and vulnerable work to date a heartsick breakup letter with the
West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United
States in family rooms on college campuses on city streets the consequences of this rupture
are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the
West has served up. This is the book for our time.
