Book No. 29 of 2025
Some books make you despair that we live in a world where they have to be written, and this is one of them. El-Akkad writes with such urgency and directness that it’s heartbreaking, and it is saddening that his trenchant critiques of imperialism and neoliberalism will go unheard by the people who need to hear them the most.
It’s impossible, I think, (unless you’re a deliberately obtuse reader) to not wince internally with self-recognition in some of El-Akkad’s essays; we are all guilty of complicity and complacency to some degree with the horrors—and attendant blindness to such—of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Behind the rage is a plea for humanity, and a sadness that one has to beg for humanity at all.