The 2024 Marino Family Writers Workshop
The Georgetown University Library is honored to welcome Omar El Akkad as the 2024 Marino Family Writers Workshop author for his second novel What Strange Paradise, which was awarded the 2021 Giller Prize.
El Akkad worked for 10 years as a journalist for the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, and his first novel American War was published in 2017.
This exhibition gathers items from the Georgetown University Library collection to detail El Akkad’s work and examine some of the themes from What Strange Paradise.
What Strange Paradise (First American Edition)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2021
Accompanied by interview booklet Indiespensable #93 from Powell’s Books
PS3605.L12 W48 2021 and PS3605.L12 Z46 2021
What Strange Paradise (First British Edition)
Picador, in association with Goldsboro Books, London, July 2021
No. 35 of 350 numbered copies, signed by the author
PS3605.L12 W48 2021b
El Akkad’s second novel tells the story of a Syrian refugee boy who washes ashore on a Mediterranean island as the sole survivor of a refugee boat that set out from Cairo.
American War (First Canadian Edition)
McClelland & Stewart, 2017
Signed by the author
PS3605.L12 A44 2017b
Ferry en route to the Prince Islands near Istanbul, Turkey
Peter Turnley
Archival pigment print, 2012
Gift of Mark Callahan, 2017.7.2
Kurdish Refugees from Iraq, the Gulf War, Southern Turkey
Peter Turnley
Archival pigment print
Gift of Ravi Singhvi, 2016.8.9
Peter Turnley is a photojournalist and street photographer who has worked to document refugee communities around the world.
Mare Nostrum, Al Motawaset
Islam Aly
Artist’s Book, Edition of 50, 2022
Quotations from contemporary migrants who survived their crossing of the Mediterranean are coupled with drawings and brass miniatures of boats from predynastic Egypt, connecting today’s immigrant’s journey to the soul’s journey in the afterlife.
The title is taken from the Latin and Arabic names for the Mediterranean Sea and was suggested by Aly’s son.
A People's Future of the United States
One World, Penguin Random House, New York, 2019
Edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams
PS648.F86 P46 2019
Contains El Akkad’s short story “Riverbed”, about a woman in a future America who revisits a camp in Billings, Montana where she and her family were imprisoned while she was a teenager following a terrorist attack at a bowl game.
Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World's Most Infamous Prison
Abrams ComicArts, New York, 2020
Edited by Sarah Mirk
UB805.C92 G83 2020
El Akkad’s introduction describes his time as a journalist at Guantanamo Bay and the semantic gymnastics used by the Americans stationed there to distance themselves from their actions.
Terraform: Watch / Worlds / Burn
MCD × FSG Originals, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2022
Edited by Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans
PS648.S3 T429 2022
Contains El Akkad’s short story “Busy”, which describes a post-fossil fuel America where people work to produce random numbers in an entropy mill.
Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction
City Lights Books, San Francisco, 2024
Edited by Jordan Elgrably
PJ7694.E8 S76 2024
Contains El Akkad’s short story “The Icarist” about a young boy growing up in Doha whose life is disrupted by a fateful forbidden encounter.
The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights
Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 2021
Edited by Paulo Lemos Horta; translated by Yasmine Seale
PJ7716.A1 S43 2021
In his foreword to this newly translated version of this classic collection, El Akkad recounts his father’s boyhood attendance at the literary gatherings at the El Feshawy coffee house in Cairo.
حكايات من هنا : قصص قصيرة ونصوص
Ḥikāyāt min hunā : qiṣaṣ qaṣīrah wa-nuṣūṣ.
Dār al-Adham, Cairo, 2023
Edited by ʿAfāf al-Sayyid
PJ8216 .H55 2023
Contains a number of texts from young writers from Egypt. The texts published in this work, edited and supervised by ʿAfāf al-Sayyid, are based on the lived experiences of young Egyptians in the communities about which they are writing.
United States Passport of Lisa Sergio, issued 1950
Lisa Sergio Papers, Box 13, Folder 32
These pages from the passport of Lisa Sergio (1905–1989), an Italian-American radio news broadcaster, contain entry and exit stamps related to her travels in the Middle East in 1950. This section of the passport in particular details her exit from West Jerusalem, entry into then-Jordanian-administered East Jerusalem, and travels through al-Ramtha and Darʿā before departing via Damascus. The stamps in her passport provide a bureaucratic accounting of her travels through divided and occupied territories during a period of conflict.
Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1928
Stephen R. Graubard Collection, PR4070 .F29 1928
This stage play by author J.M. Barrie that debuted in 1904 popularized the character of Peter Pan and the fictional island of Neverland, which El Akkad has claimed as an inspiration for What Strange Paradise.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
American Publishers Corporation, New York, 1891
Gift of Gerard Previn Meyer family, PS1097 .A6 1891b
This collection of stories by Ambrose Bierce contains the first book appearance of his iconic story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, which El Akkad quotes from in the epigraph to What Strange Paradise.
Untitled [figures in a boat]
Lynd Ward (1905-1985)
Ink drawing on paper
Gift of May McNeer Ward, 1985.1.54
This rough sketch by Ward evokes Amir and Vänna on the ferryman’s boat.
Co-curated by Steve Fernie and Ryan Zohar.
Special thanks to:
Cindy Bowen, Asheleigh Folsom, Margie Kirschbaum, Christen Runge, Kathleen Scalera, Jay Sylvestre, Scott Taylor, LuLen Walker, and John Zarrillo.