Collection of translated writings by Alaa Abd El Fattah to be published in October

A collection of translated writings by the imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah titled You Have Not Yet Been Defeated will be published by independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK on October 20, 2021, according to a press release by the publisher.

Composed of Abd El Fattah’s essays, interviews and social media posts on technology, revolution, history and imprisonment, the book is his first collection to be published in English, and is translated by a collective. Bestselling Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein will contribute a preface.

Abd El Fattah has been in prison for most of the last seven years and many of the pieces collected in You Have Not Yet Been Defeated were smuggled out of his cell. Many of the articles were originally published in Mada Masr.

The publisher’s synopsis says: 

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 Abd el-Fattah’s written voice came to symbolize much of what was fresh, inspiring and revolutionary about the uprisings that have defined the last decade. From theses on technology, to theories of history, to painful reflections on the meaning of prison, his voice in these pages — arranged by family and friends — cuts as sharply relevant, as dangerous, as ever.

In his latest incarceration, Abd El Fattah has been held in the Maximum Security Wing 2 of the Tora Prison Complex since September 2019 when was arrested by national security agents as he was leaving Dokki Police Station, where he had been forced to spend 12 hours every night — from 6 pm to 6 am — as part of his probation since his release from prison at the end of March after serving a five-year sentence.

Abd El Fattah is being held in remand detention on charges of belonging to an illegal organization and spreading false information. His detention is renewed by the State Security Prosecution on a routine basis. The conditions of Alaa’s current imprisonment are the worst of his multiple detentions dating back to 2006. He has no access to reading materials, sunlight, or clean water. 

Fitzcarraldo Editions, an independent publisher in London, specializes in contemporary fiction and long-form essays. Founded in 2014, it published two Nobel Literature laureates in its first five years, Svetlana Alexievich and Olga Tokarczuk.