The books that stayed with Canada Reads author Omar El Akkad long after he read them
What Strange Paradise is being championed by entrepreneur Tareq Hadhad on Canada Reads 2022
Omar El Akkad is a Canadian author and journalist who currently lives in Portland, Ore. He is the author of 2022 Canada Reads contender What Strange Paradise, which won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize — the biggest prize in Canadian literature.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, El Akkad grew up in Doha, Qatar, before moving to Canada with his family. His work as a journalist saw him cover many of the most important news stories of the decade, including the war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantànamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Mo.
In addition to What Strange Paradise, which tells the story of the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child, he is also the author of the 2017 novel American War, which was defended on Canada Reads 2018 by actor Tahmoh Penikett.
What Strange Paradise is being championed by entrepreneur and former Syrian refugee Tareq Hadhad on Canada Reads 2022.
Canada Reads will take place March 28-31. The debates will be hosted by Ali Hassan and will be broadcast on CBC Radio One, CBC TV, CBC Gem and on CBC Books.
Here are some of the books that El Akkad says have inspired, moved and educated him over the years.
A Death in the Family by James Agee
"It's a book about a family where the father dies suddenly, and the aftermath of that death. And I'm a little bit biased because I read it shortly after my own father died. But I think for emotional precision and line-by-line beauty of language, it's probably my favourite novel. It's a stunning piece of work. It was published posthumously, after Agee himself died. And it also has one of the most beautiful prologues of any book I've ever read.
"I think for emotional precision and line-by-line beauty of language, it's probably my favorite novel. It's a stunning piece of work.
"I had stumbled across Agee's other book, which is a sprawling piece of nonfiction called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, about the lives of Southern sharecroppers. It's a doorstop of a book. It's very self-indulgent at times and goes off on all kinds of tangents. But it was also the book that influenced me the most when I was writing American War. And so afterwards, I wanted to read everything that he had ever written. I went back and looked at his film reviews, the letters he wrote when he was a teenager. I found this novel, and it's nothing like his other book. I had no idea what the subject matter was going to be — it caught me by surprise in that way, and I think it's probably one of the reasons why it's had such an impact on me."
Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
"Coming Through Slaughter is another book that is just so gorgeous at the line level and does so much with the simple description of place that I think it expanded my conception of what fiction could do simply by putting you in a place and a time.
"It was one of the first novels I read shortly after coming to Canada as a teenager, and I had a particular interpretation of what the literary canon looked like in this country. That was one of the books that sort of destroyed that interpretation in the best possible way."
A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan
"It's a book that came out in the '80s about this guy John Paul Vann, who was a senior official in America's disaster in Vietnam, and he almost ruined his own life writing it. He spent years and years of his life at it. It almost destroyed his marriage. It almost destroyed his life because he was going to try and tell the entire story of America's war in Vietnam.
It is the single greatest journalistic achievement I've ever read — this massive, detailed indictment of the hubris of America's foreign misadventures.
"And the result is the single greatest journalistic achievement I've ever read — this massive, detailed indictment of the hubris of America's foreign misadventures. It's the book that I often bring up when people ask me about what I think the best book about America's invasion of Afghanistan is. I bring up this book that was written 35 years before any of that happened. It really is just an outstanding piece of journalism, and I think maybe my favourite nonfiction book."
This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
"My favourite book of the last decade — I found out about this book because Claire Cameron, Leanne and I were three of the nominees for the Writers' Trust Prize. And the first time I met Claire at a writing conference, she handed me this book and said, 'You need to read this.' We'd never met before, so she didn't know anything about me. She just assumed that I needed to read this — and she was absolutely right. It's a collection of short stories, poems and songs, and to this day, I can't quite express why I love this book so much, but I talk about it endlessly. It is devastating at times, hilarious at others.
To this day, I can't quite express why I love this book so much, but I talk about it endlessly.
"It's an indictment of a particular kind of obliviousness. It's written entirely on the author's terms. It doesn't pander or cater. And it's just beautiful, beautiful writing. And so that book has just stayed with me ever since I first read it."
Here is a Body by Basma Abdel Aziz
"Here is a Body is a novel that is a fictional account based on a very real event, and the event is the massacre of protesters that happened in Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The government sent in troops to where these protesters had been holed up, and the estimates of how many people those troops killed are in the range of about a thousand people in a single day.
"Basma lives in Egypt, so she faces the consequences of writing about these topics firsthand and directly. And I thought it was just a really fine example of when a writer speaks truth to power, using the means of the medium of fiction. So that book is a very, very powerful book. I don't think it got the attention it deserved when it came out in English last year."
What Storm, What Thunder by Miriam J.A. Chancey
"This is a book about the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, and the lives that it upended. It's in my mind one of the finest examples of someone writing from a place of deep love and deep grief simultaneously — the story itself is wondrous and very, very human."
I think it's impossible to write a book like this without a very deeply developed sense of love.
"And at a technical level, the construction of the book and the many different stories in it is very impressive. But mostly, I just think of this as a book written from the heart in a way that makes for a very visceral reading experience. I think it's impossible to write a book like this without a very deeply developed sense of love."
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
"Susan Sontag once described this as the 'thinkiest' of novels. It's about a bunch of European hypochondriacs who end up in a mountainside sanitarium where these snake-oil salesmen basically cater to their invented maladies.
It stands apart from most other novels for its depth, its complexity and just the vastness of the things it forces you to think about.
"It is at times a completely self-indulgent mess of a book. Characters go on philosophical debates for 20 or 30 pages at a time. But it is an absolute masterwork in terms of dealing with the privilege of invented cures for invented diseases.
"It's one of the more challenging books that I've ever read, and it stands apart from most other novels for its depth, its complexity and just the vastness of the things it forces you to think about."
Omar El Akkad's comments have been edited for length and clarity.