Omar El Akkad spent ten years as a journalist covering the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and the U.S. But the future is shaped at least as much by cultural, political, and social factors as by technology. Many have followed that line of thinking by studying weird pockets of early adopters in order to identify new technology trends. William Gibson famously noted that the future is already here-it’s just not very evenly distributed. The rollercoaster isn’t fun anymore, but we can’t get off. Propagandists reverse engineer algorithms to deliver automated misinformation at scale. Most Americans struggle to eke out a living even as corporate profits surge. Filter bubbles enclose us in their comfortable but toxic embrace. The federal government is alternatively self-destructive or deadlocked.
“In examining the confluence of war, migration and a sense of settlement, it raises questions of indifference and powerlessness and, ultimately, offers clues as to how we might reach out empathetically in a divided world,” they wrote.It feels like America is tearing itself apart. In their citation, the jury, comprised of chair Zalika Reid-Benta, Megan Gail Coles, Joshua Whitehead, Malaysian novelist Tash Aw and American author Joshua Ferris, lauded the book for painting “a portrait of displacement and belonging that is at once unflinching and tender.” What Strange Paradise, the former Globe and Mail journalist’s second novel, examines the refugee crisis and the sociopolitical circumstances that have created it by telling the story of a young boy who washes up ashore on a Mediterranean island with a number of other refugees, and survives. “I am deeply grateful to everybody at Scotiabank and the Giller Prize for making this happen under such difficult circumstances.”
It is the greatest honour of my career,” he told the audience at a live gala in Toronto on November 8. “For the past few months, I’ve had the incredible honour of being mentioned in the same breath as four outstanding authors, any one of whom could be standing up here. Omar El Akkad has won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel What Strange Paradise (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada).Īs he accepted the award, a shocked El Akkad said he “didn’t think I had a chance in hell of winning this, and so I’m making the speech up as I go along.” Omar El Akkad won the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel What Strange Paradise.
0 kommentar(er)
