The American civil war isn’t mentioned, although the fact that this new conflict is referred to as “the second” suggests that there must have been a first. What is most striking about El Akkad’s story is that it is both distinctly American-he takes care to paint the Southern insurgents with compassion even as he seems to realize they are wrong and sometimes capable of evil-but also otherworldly. There are little details that stand out: the stubbornness of symbols how the simple revving of an engine still running on old fuel, while ultimately meaningless, becomes an act of rebellion, an expression of self-affirmation but a completely futile one in the face of so much killing. A Southern suicide bomber assassinated the president in 2073, plunging the country into violence. It was enough, though, to moor a movement that would lead to the deaths of millions. The nature of Southern “culture” was rich, but also somewhat vague and constructed, like all cultural identities are. Southerners resented this and other impositions from the richer, prosperous Northern states.

In the early 2070s, the federal government, by then based in Columbus, moved to outlaw fossil fuels. Climate change has changed the continent, submerging the banks of Louisiana and the near entirety of Florida, save for an island enclave or two, one of which eventually houses the notorious Sugarloaf Detention Facility for Northern prisoners of war. Omar El Akkad’s American War, which interprets the American South by way of the Middle East, challenges Americans to imagine what it might be like to die for, but also kill, their fellow citizens. Dystopian novels are a difficult genre: They need to be imaginative, edging on the far-fetched, while being just plausible enough to terrify.

American war akkad