Omar El Akkad is a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction for his debut nonfiction work. (Omar El Akkad: Kateshia Pendergrass)

Canadian writer Omar El Akkad has been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

The National Book Awards are annual American literary prizes administered by the National Book Foundation, and honour the best fiction, nonfiction, poetry, translated literature, and young people’s literature published each year. Winners of the National Book Awards receive $10,000 (U.S.), a bronze medal, and a statue. Finalists receive $1,000 (U.S.) and a bronze medal.

El Akkad is one of five writers shortlisted for this year’s nonfiction prize. He is nominated for his debut nonfiction work, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. In the book, El Akkad interrogates the rights and freedoms of the West that he now sees as compromised by its official response to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The other shortlisted nonfiction writers are Julia Ioffe for Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy, Yiyun Li for Things in Nature Merely Grow, Claudia Rowe for Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, and Jordan Thomas for When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World.

The five winners of this year’s National Book Awards will be named at a ceremony in New York City on November 19.