No Small Talk at Metis — One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
About the event
Our non-fiction book club is back for its first full discussion — and we're starting with a book that leaves no room for small talk. *One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This* by Omar El Akkad — winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction — is a searing, deeply personal reckoning with the war on Gaza and the moral failures of the West. El Akkad, a novelist and journalist born in Egypt and raised in Qatar before making his life in North America, writes about the distance between the values the Western world professes and what it actually defends when it counts. The title comes from his own words, written in October 2023, that travelled around the world. Part memoir, part indictment, it asks what it means to bear witness — and what our language, our institutions and our silences reveal about us. This is a book made for exactly the kind of evening we're building: honest, unhurried, sometimes uncomfortable, always in good faith. Come ready to talk about what moved you, what you resisted, and what you're still turning over. A few of the questions on the table:
• What does El Akkad mean by complicity — and where does he place the reader in it? • Can personal testimony do what reportage and politics can't? • What do we owe the things we witness from a distance?
Please read the book beforehand so we can go deep. Didn't quite finish? Come anyway — you'll still get a lot out of the conversation (just be ready for the odd spoiler). The book is available in the shop, so you can pick up your copy from us any time before the 18th. Hosted by the team behind Metis. 📚 In English 🗓 Sunday, 18 October · 5 p.m. 📍 Metis Books & Café · Gleimstraße 21 · 10437 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg) 🎟 Free — no ticket needed. We just kindly ask that you order something to eat or drink while you're here: it's what keeps these evenings, and the bookshop, alive. RSVP here so we know how many seats to set out. Whether you were at the launch or you're joining us for the first time, you're very welcome.
