OMAR EL AKKAD is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager, and now lives in the United States. His books have been translated into thirteen languages. An international bestseller, his debut novel American War was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, won the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and was named by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that shaped our world. Both American War and El Akkad’s second novel, What Strange Paradise, were finalists in CBC’s Canada Reads and winners of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction.
