Omar El Akkad discusses his searing new work, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a powerful reckoning with Western hypocrisy.

Sparked by his viral tweet during the bombardment of Gaza – viewed over 10 million times – Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This lays bare the fractures he has seen in the West’s empty promises of freedom and justice.

In this timely session, the Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist reflects on how events like the Black Lives Matter protests, the escalating climate crisis and the violence in the Middle East have reshaped his understanding of migration, power and inequality and forced him to confront what it means to live in a West that has betrayed its fundamental values.

Praised by Richard Flanagan as ‘a howl from the heart of our age’, El Akkad’s book explores exactly how the West has failed and offers hope for a way forward. With Tasneem Chopra.