Description
How far would you be prepared to go to speak your mind?
This special event, in partnership with English PEN, one of the oldest human rights organisations, focuses on the story of activist and public intellectual Alaa Abd el-Fattah, arguably the most high-profile political prisoner in Egypt whose book, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, much of it written in prison, keeps the spirit of the 2011 revolution alive.
Translated into English by an anonymous collective, Abd el-Fattah’s ideas represent a global generation which has only known struggle against a failing system, and his written voice has come to symbolise much of what was inspiring and revolutionary about the uprisings that defined Egypt for a decade.
Alaa’s mother, activist Laila Soueif, and his first cousin, writer and filmmaker Omar Robert Hamilton, join award-winning novelist, Kamila Shamsie, as they discuss his work and the courage of political prisoners who lose their freedom simply for expressing their views and protesting against authoritarian regimes.
Presented in partnership with English PEN.
Related Book
About the Speakers
Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel, Home Fire, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Bailey’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester and lives in London.
Omar Robert Hamilton
Omar Robert Hamilton is a novelist and filmmaker working between Europe and the Arab world.
Born in London, he moved to Cairo with the outbreak of revolution in 2011, establishing a media collective with fellow filmmakers to document the uprising from ground level, producing dozens of short documentaries that generated millions of views. His first novel, The City Always Wins, based on those experiences, was published by Faber & Faber in 2017, and in translation across the major European languages. It was named a Book of the Year by the Boston Globe and awarded the Society of Authors prize for Best Debut Under 35 and the Prix de Littérature by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. He wrote and directed Though I Know the River is Dry, a short fiction shot in Palestine starring Kais Nashef (Paradise Now) which took the Prix UIP at Rotterdam, Best Short at Abu Dhabi, and was nominated for Best Short at the European Film Awards. He is a co-founder of the Palestine Festival of Literature, an annual festival that takes place in cities across Palestine and a co-editor of the Selected Works of Egyptian political prisoner, Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
Over the last several years he has spent time in various points on the migration path through Europe, writing for Guernica and n+1 and working on an upcoming novel to be published by Faber & Faber.
Laila Soueif
Laila Soueif is assistant professor of mathematics at Cairo University and a life-long advocate of human rights and academic freedom. She was one of the founders of the March 9 Movement for University Autonomy in Egypt, a group that was active in defending academic freedom and the independence of the university, and which played a role in paving the way to the 2011 revolution. She is part of a family of activists: her late husband, Ahmed Seif el-Islam, was a renowned human rights lawyer; her sister, Ahdaf Soueif, is an internationally celebrated political writer; and her children, Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Mona Seif and Sanaa Seif are all dedicated human rights activists. Alaa has been imprisoned in Egypt for his writings and his activism for almost ten years.
About the Chair
Daniel Hilton
Daniel Hilton is Middle East Eye’s head of news. In April 2021, his reporting from the Libyan town of Tarhuna on civil war atrocities was recognised with an Amnesty International Media Award. He has also been shortlisted for the Prix Bayeux awards for war correspondents and journalist of the year at the Drum awards. Previously Hilton was based in Beirut, where he was region editor of Lebanon’s The Daily Star newspaper. He has also contributed to the Guardian, the TLS and Vittles.
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