HUNA

A literary memoir of a teenager who became an adult over seven years spent as a political prisoner in Egypt.

Following the Arab Spring that captured global attention, Egypt churned through power grabs by military leaders and the Muslim Brotherhood. By October 6, 2013, the country was again embroiled in student protests and counterrevolutionary crackdowns, and ElGendy was 17: lover of basketball and rap music, planning to begin his engineering degree, and nursing a budding interest in politics and activism. When he is caught by the police videoing a demonstration in downtown Cairo, he is pulled from the car and arrested with his father, Baba. His debut recounts their subsequent years as “siyasis,” or political prisoners, moved between the progressively inhumane facilities managed by a brutal regime, their legal cases trapped in the bureaucracy, corruption, and self-preservation tactics of the Egyptian government. Inside prison walls, the author forges friendships, studies for his degree, and collaborates with cellmates to create systems for everything from using the bathroom and sharing meals to dispute resolution. ElGendy sculpts his story with reverence for both the craft and the saving power of writing, pulling it taut between demoralizing legal appeals, the ingenuity and solidarity of prisoners, and the shifting poles of what is and is not acceptable in a life lived on the inside. This is the story of oppression by and resistance to a cruel power and an unjust prison sentence, pierced through with the gentle love of a son finding tenderness for his father in a situation riddled with guilt, depravity, and shame. In ElGendy’s masterful hands, his personal history becomes not only a beautiful, artistic expression of deliverance and redemption, but also a heroic clarion call for moral decency and liberation more broadly.

Fearless and elegant—an uncompromising work from a new author with a mighty voice.