“I went from being, like, number 74,000 on the bestseller list to number 74, virtually overnight,” El Akkad says. It went from a solitary project to something that belongs to everyone.” A fairly big break came when The New York Times wrote a review of the novel. “It’s what winning the lottery must feel like.
“I consider myself extremely fortunate in this whole process,” the author says. It had been many years thinking about it, with no publisher, no agent, no notion that it would be published.” He spent one year actually writing it, then got an agent, and worked on 12 drafts before it was released to the world. “Unlike my previous three, this novel for me had something that needed to be said. I got home that night and just decided to quit the job and dedicate myself to this book,” he says. “One day, I had a tough conversation with a departmental editor at my job at The Globe and Mail. “I have three others, but those will never see the light of day.” He does not deem them worthy of publication, and that is his right-but it does mean he has been turning his hand to writing fiction for many years, and the practice seems to have paid off. For good reason.Įl Akkad’s novel is a confident, assured piece of work, partially due to the fact that “it is actually not my first novel,” he admits. The book has struck major nerves, and gained plenty of critical acclaim. He is speaking on the phone from his adopted home of Portland, taking a break from the tour he is doing to support his debut novel, American War.
“For a long time, this was a novel of ideas and arguments, and about how there is no such thing as exotic suffering,” says Canadian-Egyptian author and journalist Omar El Akkad.
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