American War

I'd like to start my review by thanking Joy at Joyous Reads whose blogged review of American War back in April 2018 encouraged me to add this novel to my TBR - and, almost two years later, I've finally read it! Why on earth did I wait so long? American War is unbelievably good!

American War is one of a select few novels which, for me at least, surpassed the five star rating I have awarded. As I closed the book after reading its final page, I actually had to take a couple of minutes to bring myself back to the present day because I had been so deeply immersed in Sarat's world that it felt more real to me than my own! El Akkad has brilliantly meshed together the realities of refugees' smashed lives in every war ever with a chilling portrait of how such desperation can be manipulated by callous men to create radicalised suicidal human weapons. What makes American War so shocking is that, by imagining America ripped apart by a second civil war, El Akkad's refugees are both Americans themselves and the result of American warfare techniques. This isn't the USA invading foreign nations in South or Central America, or across the Middle East, but the narrative and actions have such an authentic ring to them because I have already seen these ideas in novels such as Red Birds by Mohammed Hanif and The President's Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli.

The concept of The South rising again is wonderfully evocative. The American War storyline is told from a point even further into the future than the events we follow so it reads as rich historical fiction even it is actually science fiction. We glimpse as-yet impossible technologies, but the majority of scenes are set on poverty-stricken Southern lands, all-but destroyed by years of war, or within the crowded tent city that is Patience Refugee Camp, so people are struggling to survive with very little, their only highlights being the monthly Chinese aid shipment. I got a sense of a society which had reached affluent success, but which had now lost everything it had achieved - perhaps similar to present-day Syria?

El Akkad has already garnered comparisons with authors such as Cormac McCarthy and, on the strength of his vivid depictions of these grim settings, I would agree that his writing is easily as powerful. I was absolutely steamrollered by American War and will, I think, be enthusiastically recommending this novel to everyone I can find! Superb!

Well, this was... underwhelming.

Where do I start...
As I didn't read the English original but listened to the German audiobook, I don't feel able to criticize the language as such. Criticism there might always be due to poor translation.
What is definitely on the author himself, though, is the (lack of) character depth and development in basically all of the cardboard cut-outs populating this novel and the lack of both "innovation" and progress in the society he "builts". The more adequate word would be "pieces together from newspaper clippings and history books".
His version of the near-future is a re-run of the American Civil War with some more recent types of war crimes and some climate change effects added for shock value. All these things remain sadly decorational, I felt. The author couldn't even be bothered to invent any technical progress, or any new political power dynamics in a way that contained more than making the US the receiving end of destabelization now.
The characters, as mentioned before, felt extremely flat. The main character was one of the worst attempts at (I'm guessing here) hardened kick-ass female anti-hero that I've seen in some time. A clichee in any way possible - a slightly aggressive tomboy in behaviour, not attractive bordering on ugly and "unfeminine"/"manly" in looks, and, to complete clichee bingo, lesbian with extremely short hair. Still, she couldn't put two and two together but for the help of a manipulative older man who turned her into a tool. The reader gets to see her whole life as a chain of cause and effect, all outwardly induced. And I as a reader couldn't even be bothered to feel anything for her. I spent about fourteen hours listening to what should have been a devastating example of what war, loss, misinformation and general cruelty can do to a person - and it did nothing.

I later read that the author is a political journalist and that this is his first novel. Well. That at least explains some of what felt off. You don't get character development and fictitious embellishment in reports (and really you shouldn't). But then, fictional texts can profit greatly from both while still offering relevant criticism on the real world. As novels tend to be longer than articles or arctile series in newspapers, you also don't have to be as direct and on the nose with what you want the reader to understand. Subtlety often does work better than patronizing readers of fiction opinionwise.

Not all people can produce both kinds of texts, fictitious and "realistic", in the same quality, though. And had I not had this book as an audiobook, I wouldn't have finished it.