Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 3 reviews on
"The text you are holding is living history." -- Naomi Klein, from the foreword
Alaa Abd el-Fattah is arguably the most high-profile political prisoner in Egypt, if not the Arab world, rising to international prominence during the revolution of 2011. A fiercely independent thinker who fuses politics and technology in powerful prose, an activist whose ideas represent a global generation which has only known struggle against a failing system, a public intellectual with the rare courage to offer personal, painful honesty, Alaa's written voice came to symbolize much of what was fresh, inspiring and revolutionary about the uprisings that have defined the last decade. Collected here for the first time in English are a selection of his essays, social media posts and interviews from 2011 until the present. He has spent the majority of those years in prison, where many of these pieces were written. Together, they present not only a unique account from the frontline of a decade of global upheaval, but a catalogue of ideas about other futures those upheavals could yet reveal. From theories on technology and history to profound reflections on the meaning of prison, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a book about the importance of ideas, whatever their cost.
Naomi Klein is an author and climate justice activist.
There were many moving moments in this conversation about Alaa Abd El-Fattah's continued outrageous imprisonment but, for me, the most powerful was when his sister @Sana2 said of bringing the book into the world: "This is one way of breaking him out of prison."
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer.
I just received Alaa Abd el-Fattah's 'You Have Not Yet Been Defeated", a collection of the Egyptian revolutionary's extraordinary jailhouse writing. I was so struck by @NaomiAKlein's preface, which is about revolution and defeat
@TheAtlantic contributing writer. Podcast: @peoplelikeuspod Author: BLACK WAVE on Saudi-Iran rivalry. Top 100 NYT books for 2020. Ex BBC and FT.
Ahmed was thrown in jail for writing fiction. Alaa published a book while in prison, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. They are the generation that should have helped to build Egypt post 2011. Instead one is in exile, one is prison....like 1000's of others. https://t.co/YyCQAC1isW
"Read this book, absorb the power of Alaa Abd el-Fattah's words, and commit to solidarity with this imprisoned writer whose intellect and compassion our world on fire so desperately needs."
-- Amy Goodman, Host, Democracy Now!
"[A] damning indictment of the authoritarianism and violence of the Egyptian state... Very few of the accounts of 2011 that have emerged over the past ten years capture the emotional intensity of the moment and the tragedy of its aftermath as perceptively as Alaa does in [You Have Not Yet Been Defeated]. These essays are necessary reading for anyone who wishes to understand the last decade of Egyptian politics."
--Nihal El Aasar, Jacobin
"Alaa is the bravest, most critical, most engaged citizen of us all. At a time when Egypt has been turned into a large prison, Alaa has managed to cling to his humanity and be the freest Egyptian."
--Khaled Fahmy, author of All The Pasha's Men
"Alaa is in prison not because he committed a crime, not because he said too much, but because his very existence poses a threat to the state. Those who are bold, those who do not relent, will always threaten the terrified and ultimately weak state which must, to survive, squash its opponents like flies. But Alaa will not allow himself to be crushed like that, I know."
-- Jillian C. York, director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Alaa is a philosopher of everyday life and lifelong struggle; he doesn't merely find meaning in that which we go through, especially in dark political moments, but creates meaning and gives it form in writing. And he does so from a highly entrenched and implicated place in the present. His thoughts know no frontiers; they pierce through local contexts to inspire new modes of thinking about the chaotic substance of politics."
-- Lina Attalah, editor in chief of Mada Masr
"A powerfully original book, that explains why, in the midst of world wars andclimate emergency, we need to pay attention to one lone man who'sbartering his life to win back a little justice - and probably losing."
--Susie Day, Counterpunch