
American War
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Dion Graham
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By:
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Omar El Akkad
About this listen
An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle - a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.
Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. Telling her story is her nephew, Benjamin Chestnut, born during the war - part of the Miraculous Generation - and now an old man confronting the dark secret of his past, his family's role in the conflict and, in particular, that of his aunt, a woman who saved his life while destroying untold others.
©2017 Omar El Akkad (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Editors Select, April 2017 - Omar El Akkad's ambitious debut novel is set in a dystopian future America amid a second Civil War, following the Chestnut family - particularly young Sarat - as they seek refuge from the encroaching violence near their home in Louisiana. The country is torn apart at first by the divide over climate change and fossil fuels and then by assassination, violence, and plague. With cinematic description and imagery, El Akkad paints a bleak vision, made all the more horrifying by how palpable and timely it all seems. I was initially concerned this book would feel too close to home to be enjoyable - and yet I was utterly transfixed from the very start. I can easily see this novel becoming an important entry into the dystopian canon. Dion Graham's performance is masterful as always. His smooth, measured delivery is welcome guide through this chaotic, dark story. -Sam, Audible Editor
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Performance
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A girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
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Interconnectedness of all life
- By Sherrie Brownell on 07-18-20
By: Andrew Krivak
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The Deluge
- By: Stephen Markley
- Narrated by: Corey Brill, Danny Campbell, Gibson Frazier, and others
- Length: 40 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms. America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat.
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Couldn’t get into it.
- By Review Reviewer on 01-20-23
By: Stephen Markley
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The Ministry for the Future
- A Novel
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
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Great ideas, uneven narration
- By depthpsychologist on 12-09-20
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The Water Knife
- By: Paolo Bacigalupi
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get nothing but dust.
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The fight for water in a drought fueled apocalypse
- By Lore on 09-24-15
By: Paolo Bacigalupi
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The Ancients
- A Novel
- By: John Larison
- Narrated by: Dani Martineck
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling, they set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people. Down the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape—while her fellow captives plan open revolt.
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Sociological SF — imaginative and deeply intelligent
- By AlishaKJ on 10-26-24
By: John Larison
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Damnation Spring
- By: Ash Davidson
- Narrated by: CJ Wilson, Rebecca Lowman, Mark Sanderlin, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Colleen and Rich Gundersen are raising their young son, Chub, on the rugged California coast. It’s 1977, and life in this Pacific Northwest logging town isn’t what it used to be. For generations, the community has lived and breathed timber; now that way of life is threatened. Colleen is an amateur midwife. Rich is a tree-topper. It’s a dangerous job that requires him to scale trees hundreds of feet tall - a job that both his father and grandfather died doing. Colleen and Rich want a better life for their son - and they take steps to assure their future.
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Many sides to the story, beautifully told
- By A. Golden on 09-03-21
By: Ash Davidson
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How High We Go in the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Brian Nishii, Keisuke Hoashi, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
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Should come with a sadness warning
- By KJH on 03-16-22
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The Last Bookstore on Earth
- By: Lily Braun-Arnold
- Narrated by: Bailey Carr
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The world is about to end. Again. Ever since the first Storm wreaked havoc on civilization as we know it, seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has been holed up in an abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey where she used to work, trading books for supplies with the few remaining survivors. It’s the one place left that feels safe to her. Until she learns that another earth-shattering Storm is coming . . . and everything changes. Enter Maeve, a prickly and potentially dangerous out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night.
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I like it.
- By Marj on 01-30-25
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Oryx and Crake
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 10 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly?
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Brilliant Science Fiction
- By Michael on 05-20-03
By: Margaret Atwood
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Divided We Fall (Divided We Fall, Book 1)
- By: Trent Reedy
- Narrated by: Andrew Eiden
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of Words in the Dust: an actionpacked YA novel set in a frighteningly plausible near future, about what happens when the States are no longer United. Danny Wright never thought he'd be the man to bring down the United States of America. In fact, he enrolled in the National Guard because he wanted to serve his country the way his father did. When the Guard is called up on the governor's orders to police a protest in Boise, it seems like a routine crowdcontrol mission...but then Danny's gun misfires, spooking the other soldiers and the already fractious crowd....
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Great book! Can't wait for book number 2!!
- By Dutch on 12-11-14
By: Trent Reedy
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The Light Pirate
- By: Lily Brooks-Dalton
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm.
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Listed under "action adventure"????
- By NMwritergal on 12-14-22
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Minor Detail
- By: Adania Shibli, Elisabeth Jaquette - translator
- Narrated by: Siiri Scott
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba - the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people - and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims, they capture a Palestinian teenager, and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand. Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder.
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Very powerful
- By Phillip Straghalis on 04-09-21
By: Adania Shibli, and others
It's no picnic - but nourishing all the same.
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- A tragic story similar to the girl in the movie Sarafina.
- A story of family history similar to that of the novel The Passage
- The story telling (news accounts and excerpts from history) similar to that of the book World War Z
- A revised history / future based upon the Civil War, similar to the book the Underground Airlines
Also, the narration was excellent. Dion Graham "nailed" the southern accents perfectly. Overall, I felt like I really got to know the characters in the novel, especially Sarat. I would love to see this novel turned into a movie. Omar El Akkad, you did good. very good.
A Great American Story!
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Here's one for all you confederates
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But, this is a character(s) story. This is a family story. I enjoyed it and will listen again.
New Twist in Crowded Genre
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Have an inside glimpse of what our lives would be like if war erupted on our soil causing innocent women and children to fend for themselves.
Scary to think this could all happen
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Great concept but honestly poor execution
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Interesting premise, average delivery
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Interesting premise but painfully boring
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Amazing writing
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What would it be like for a civilian child to be caught up in a big nation's war against a small enemy? What would it be like for that child to fear truly random death from drones in the sky? What would it be like to be a refugee from the war and have one's family slaughtered in a refugee camp? What might that child do, and why?
Setting this story in an American future brings home the awfulness of these questions and answers in a way that the news cannot.
I hope this novel wins a Nobel prize. It's that good. And that horrible.
This is an important book.
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