WHAT STRANGE PARADISE is a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize

Omar El Akkad’s WHAT STRANGE PARADISE is a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize, “a $35,000 annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.”

“The world was shocked by the 2015 photo of a Syrian child lying dead on a beach after a boat carrying him and other migrants shipwrecked. Seven years later, the shipwrecks, drownings, and migrant crisis continue. Omar El Akkad’s alternately dream-like and photo-realistic novel, WHAT STRANGE PARADISE, imagines a similar journey of a Syrian boy and an ark of fellow refugees. In spare, unsparing prose, El Akkad limns the callousness and kindness of his characters, lifting them off the front page and bringing them fully to life and forcing us to respond.”

– 2022 Literary Prize Jury

The winner will be announced on April 21.