Oregon author Omar El Akkad will talk about his award-winning novels, “American War,” and “What Strange Paradise” at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 16, during a Cannon Beach Library Facebook Live presentation.

In El Akkad’s novels, the fictional characters grapple with events and issues in today’s news. His latest novel, “What Strange Paradise,” was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 2021. It is told from the viewpoint of two children caught up in the real-life Middle East wars and the migrant crisis that followed.

His debut novel, “American War,” takes place during the second American Civil War in 2074 when the United States is ravaged by climate change and disease. It asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

The novel was translated into 13 languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.

El Akkad was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in Portland. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and other newspapers and magazines.

The site can be reached through the library’s website, www.cannonbeachlibrary.org, or through the library’s Facebook page www.facebook.com/cannonbeachlibrary/.