Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad won the non-fiction prize at the annual National Book Awards in the US, while Lebanese writer Rabih Alameddine was named winner in the fiction category.
Often referred to as “the Oscars of book publishing”, the National Book Awards have been held since 1936 by the non-profit National Book Foundation, and has often served as a counter-voice to current events.
El Akkad's book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, is his first work of non-fiction, written after the war in Gaza began, and accuses the western world of complicity in the Palestinian enclave’s destruction.
The book has been commended for blending memoir with political meditation and reportage, discussing how ideals of freedom and justice have collapsed under the guise of neutrality.
Receiving his award at Cipriani Wall Street event venue in Manhattan, El Akkad said it was hard to celebrate winning for a book that was written in response to a genocide.
“It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I spent two years seeing what shrapnel does to a child’s body,” he told the gathering of writers, publishers and editors, as reported by AP.
Palestine was also top of mind for Alameddine, who began his acceptance speech with a lament for the recent bombing of a refugee camp.
He mixed his pain with humour, joking about the demands of his agent, Nicole Aragi, and thanked everyone from his gastrointestinal doctor to the “psychiatrist who has been telling me to get over myself for more than 20 years.”
Alameddine's The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) is about a family's bond set within the chaos of modern Lebanon.
The novel follows a 63-year-old high school philosophy teacher, Raja, who lives with his controlling mother in a small Beirut apartment. One day, Raja is invited to a writing residency in the US, and he schemes to escape the private and national calamities that shape his life.
A third winner from the region is Iranian-American author Daniel Nayeri whose book, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story, won for young people’s literature.
Elsewhere, Chicago-born Patricia Smith's The Intentions of Thunder won the poetry award, while Argentinian author Gabriela Cabezon Camara won the award for translated literature, for her book, We Are Green and Trembling, translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers.
Winners each receive $10,000.
Honorary awards were presented to fiction writer George Saunders and author-publisher-mentor Roxane Gay.
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