We are pleased to welcome award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad to Waterstones Deansgate to mark then paperback release of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Akkad’s international bestselling, debut non-fiction book unpicks the hypocrisy and injustices of the West at a volatile and shocking time. One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This is both a searing critique of Western imperialism, and a book filled with hope and the desire for a better world.

Omar will be in conversation with historian, author and BAFTA winning film-maker David Olusoga. Together, they will discuss this urgent and necessary work and answer audience questions.

About the Author

Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. He is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award and the Oregon Book Award. His books have been translated into 13 languages. His debut novel, American War, was named by the BBC as one of 100 novels that shaped our world.

David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, author, BAFTA winning film-maker and presenter. He produced and presented the award winning series – Black & British: A Forgotten History, Union With David Olusoga and the BAFTA winning Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. He presents the long-running BBC history series A House Through Time and was one of contestants on Celebrity Traitors.

Outside of TV he is Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester and the author or co-author of eight books including – Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was awarded both the Longman-History Today Trustees Award and the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. The World’s War, which won First World War Book of the Year in 2014. Black & British A Short Essential History was a Waterstones Book Of The Year, Non-Fiction winner at the Quiz Writers’ Choice Awards 2021 and Book of the Year, Children’s non-fiction at the 2021 British Book Awards.

David is a recipient of the BAFTA Special Award, the British Academy’s Presidents Medal and the Norton Medlicott Medal For Services to History. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature, The Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Historical Society and an Honourar Fellow of the British Academy.