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Portland author Omar El Akkad won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, a book blending history, essay and memoir to examine Israel’s retaliation against Palestine after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, and the United States’ funding of that military campaign.
One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This faced stiff competition in its category, nominated alongside reflections on the American foster care system’s failures, the feminist history of Russia, and a mother’s memoir of surviving both of her sons’ suicides. But it was El Akkad’s account of Israeli war crimes, and the complicity of the Biden administration, that most impressed a judge’s panel that included Cristina Rivera Garza, Tiya Miles and Eli Saslow.
At a ceremony Wednesday evening in New York City, El Akkad thanked his family for their support, and said he was humbled to be considered among “far more deserving” writers.
“It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” he said. “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body. It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know my tax money is supporting this, and that many of my elected representatives happily support it, and it is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have been watching people snatched off the street by agents of the state for daring to suggest that Palestinians might be human beings.”
Born in Egypt, El Akkad grew up in Qatar and lived in Canada with his family before coming to the United States. During his journalistic career, El Akkad reported on Guantánamo Bay, the war in Afghanistan and the Arab Spring movement of the early 2010s. His book took its title from a viral tweet, but El Akkad was already writing about the war in Gaza at that time.
El Akkad accepted the award in a ceremony held at Cipriani Wall Street, where Grammy-winning singer Corrine Bailey Rae was the evening’s musical guest. With novelist Karen Russell, El Akkad was one of two Oregon finalists for a National Book Award. Russell’s novel, The Antidote, was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction, which was awarded to Rabih Alameddine for his book The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother).
In his acceptance speech, El Akkad contrasted state-sanctioned violence and repression against his gratitude to fellow writers who have spoken against it. “If we are to do this work of language, we have an obligation to stand in opposition to any force—including those enacted by our own governments—that, if left unchecked, would happily decimate every principle of free expression and connection that we’ve come here to celebrate.”
