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<\/a><\/p>\nOmar El Akkad attends the 76th National Book Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on November 19, 2025 in New York City. (Arturo Holmes\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cOne Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,\u201d by Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author Omar El Akkad, won the evening\u2019s nonfiction prize. Based on a viral tweet El Akkad sent early into the Israel-Gaza war, the book maligns Western liberalism for, in El Akkad\u2019s telling, turning its back on Palestinian suffering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,\u201d El Akkad said in his acceptance speech. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know my tax money is doing this, and many of my elected representatives happily support it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later continued, \u201cAnd it is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have been watching people snatched off the streets by masked agents of the state for daring to suggest that Palestinians might be human beings\u201d \u2014 a likely reference to cases like student activist Rumeysa Ozturk. El Akkad thanked what he said were \u201cwriters who have spoken out,\u201d as thousands of authors have pressured literary organizations like PEN America to take a harder line against Israel.<\/p>\n
El Akkad\u2019s book is one of several conversation-starters that have been published as Israel-critical reflections on the war, a crop that also includes Peter Beinart\u2019s \u201cBeing Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.\u201d The nonfiction judging panel included Jewish journalist Eli Saslow, who has written extensively about the rise of antisemitism and white nationalism. Jewish public radio host Ira Glass, who introduced the category in a prerecorded voiceover, noted that it is among titles that \u201cindict the Western world in the ongoing destruction of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, Daniel Nayeri\u2019s \u201cThe Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story,\u201d a young-reader novel following two orphaned Iranian children in 1941 who help a Jewish boy evade a Nazi spy, won the award for young people\u2019s literature. The plot of the book involves the siblings deciding whether to help their new Jewish friend flee for Israel.<\/p>\n
The novel is rooted in the little-told history of the approximately 6,000 Polish Jewish refugees from the Nazis whom the Soviet Union sent to Iran, many of them children. Nayeri\u2019s family are Iranian refugees who converted from Islam to Christianity. The title won over another Jewish-interest finalist, Kyle Lukoff\u2019s \u201cA World Worth Saving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The musician Laufey, introducing the book as a nominee, said it taught \u201cthe value of cross-cultural understanding and education.\u201d<\/p>\n
A third award winner of the night also concerned the Arab world. Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine\u2019s novel \u201cThe True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)\u201d won the National Book Award for fiction. The comedic book charts several generations of a Lebanese family. In his acceptance speech, Alameddine discussed the recent bombing of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept thinking, they make desolation and call it a ceasefire,\u201d the author said. \u201cSometimes as writers we have to say, enough, enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Book Awards are among the many institutions in the literary world that have been rocked by the Israel-Gaza war \u2014 as well as broader allegations of antisemitism. In 2023 a Jewish sponsor withdrew from the ceremony over concerns that some authors planned to make a statement urging a ceasefire. Last year the organization\u2019s executive director defended the awards\u2019 decision to grant its lifetime achievement prize to influential Black publisher Paul Coates despite his history of publishing antisemitic texts.<\/p>\n