This week on Storybound, we want to spotlight Omar El Akkad, whose novel “What Strange Paradise” recently won Canada's Giller Prize. Today, we’re re-airing his episode of Storybound, where he read an excerpt from the novel, as well as from "American War," backed by an original Storybound remix, sound design, and arrangement by Jude Brewer.

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. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists.

His debut novel "American War" is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His latest novel "What Strange Paradise" won the Giller Prize and is on the long list for a 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize.

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