![]() But as the novel warns us early on, this is not really a story about war-at least not in the traditional sense. The narrative tracks Sarat and her family as violence drives them from their home in Louisiana-not far from the submerged New Orleans, “a well within the walls of its levees”-to a ravaged refugee camp, and from there to Georgia, where foreign ships unload food, blankets, and weapons for the Southern resistance.Īs the war stalks the Chestnuts across the bombed-out wreckage of the South (“the Red”), Sarat becomes increasingly radicalized, consumed by desire for vengeance against the North (“the Blue”). At the center of the story is Sarat Chestnut, who is a young girl when the war breaks out but gradually comes to play a decisive role in its outcome. This devastated landscape, and the catastrophic Second Civil War that ensues, is the subject of Omar El Akkad’s pitch-black debut novel, American War. ![]() ![]() And the states of Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, enraged by a governmental ban on fossil fuels, have seceded into a Free Southern State. The capital has relocated from Washington DC to Columbus, Ohio. Mexico has reclaimed large swathes of the southwest. ![]() ![]() The United States, its shorelines eaten away by mega-hurricanes and rising seas, has splintered apart. ![]()
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