American War (novel)

American War is the first novel by Canadian-Egyptian journalist Omar El Akkad. It is set in a near-future United States of America ravaged by climate change in which a second Civil War has broken out over the use of fossil fuels. The story is told by Benjamin Chestnut about his aunt Sarat, and is told through narrative chapters interspersed with fictional primary documents collected by the narrator.

Plot

In 2074, after the passage of a bill that bans the use of fossil fuels anywhere in the United States of America, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas secede from the Union, beginning a civil war. South Carolina is quickly incapacitated by a virus ('the Slow') that makes its inhabitants lethargic, and Texas invaded and occupied by Mexico, while the remaining states ('the Mag', an acronym of their names) continue to fight.

Sarat Chestnut, six years old when the war breaks out, lives with her family on the climate change-ravaged coast of Louisiana. Decades later, her nephew, a historian at the end of his life in New Anchorage, traces the family's story as they flee into the Mag to escape the advancing war.

Setting

Much of the novel is set in the "Free Southern State" which is originally made up of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. The United States is split between the Southern State and the remaining northern and western states; near the outset of the war, Mexico annexed or occupied large portions of California, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada and Texas.^[1] Other secessionist movements are mentioned: Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and parts of Canada are in talks to form Cascadia.

The rest of the world has also seen geopolitical change. After multiple failed revolutions the states of Northern Africa and portions of the Arab world have united as the Bouazizi Empire, with their capital in Cairo. China and the Bouazizi nations have emerged as the world's dominant economies and the European migrant crisis has reversed, with refugees from collapsed European nations fleeing across the Mediterranean to North Africa. Russia is said to have undertaken a period of aggressive expansion, and has been renamed the Russian Union.

Climate change has also had a significant impact on the world. Florida has been inundated by rising sea levels, only existing as a small archipelago. Much of Louisiana is under water and New Orleans is entirely abandoned. After intense migration inland from the flooded eastern seaboard, the capital of the United States has been relocated to Columbus. The Arabian Peninsula is too hot to support life, instead being devoted to solar power production. A character is said to have been born in the Bangladeshi Isles, suggesting extensive flooding in South Asia.

Reception

In The New York Times, book critic Michiko Kakutani compared it favourably to Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America. She wrote that "badly melodramatic" dialogue could be forgiven by the use of details that makes the fictional future "seem alarmingly real".^[2]

References

1. ↑ Hill, Lawrence (31 March 2017). "Omar El Akkad's American War, reviewed: A masterful debut". The Globe and the Mail. Retrieved 3 July 2017. 
2. ↑ Kakutani, Michiko (2017-03-27). "A Haunting Debut Looks Ahead to a Second American Civil War". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-07-02.