* * *
•••
The child lies on the shore. But for his smallness, he looks no different from the rest of the dead whose bodies litter the beach. A man, masked and gloved to protect himself from disease, approaches. He kicks at the boy’s leg and, eliciting no response, kneels down beside him. He places his hands gently into and under the sand so as to lift the boy’s head. He observes the child, the lightness of him, the bell-shaped locket he wears. Somewhere farther up the road police officers argue with soldiers over jurisdiction and photographers clamor for position and tourists gawk at the shipwrecked dead, but these people and their concerns belong to a different world, a different ordering of the world. A fantasy.
With great and delicate care, the masked man lifts the necklace from around the little boy’s neck.
Acknowledgments
Anna, Anne, Sonny. First and always.
I am deeply grateful to Tim O’Connell for his generosity, and for editing this book under incredibly difficult circumstances. For reading early drafts, providing invaluable feedback and, more so, for their friendship, I also owe an immense debt to Jared Bland, Daniel Dagris and Carolyn Smart.
At Knopf Doubleday, I have had the astounding good fortune to work with some of the best minds in publishing. For their work on this novel and the previous one, I am grateful to Gabrielle Brooks, Madeleine Denman, Amy Edelman, Nicholas Latimer, Robert Shapiro, Suzanne Smith and Angie Venezia.
Over the last few years, several of my favorite writers, whose work has changed my life, have shown me more kindness than I deserve. Chief among them are Garth Greenwell and Emily St. John Mandel. My gratitude as well to Peter Heller, David Means and Elliot Ackerman for their generosity.
I am thankful to Literary Arts—one of the finest writing organizations in the world—for being a source of community and support.
This, as everything, is for my mother. And for Theresa, Dahlia and Idris—my world.
A Note About the Author
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned Canada’s National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international best seller 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 and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, NPR and Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of one hundred novels that changed our world.
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