'American War' Explores The Universality Of Revenge

It's 2075, and America has been beset by flooding linked to climate change. The President has banned the use of fossil fuels. The southern states have broken away, looking to protect the coal mining industry. A rabid civil war is taking place. A weakened America sees new empires in China and the Middle East meddling in This dystopian world is the setting for a new novel, , by Omar El Akkad — who spent much of his career as a journalist with Canada's Globe and Mail covering real disasters and conflicts. El Akkad says that of all the characters he created for the book, only one came to him fully-formed: Sarat Chestnut, the young girl at the center of the story. "At the start of the book she's six years old," he says, "and to me she's sort of this very curious, trusting, defiant young girl whose chief attribute is this kind of rebellion against unknowing. She wants to know as much as possible. And the central arc of the book is essentially her life, and how her desire to know, her curiosity, is sort of used against her during this war."