Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A gripping, deeply moving memoir of survival, education, and resistance by a student protestor–turned–political prisoner in post-revolution Egypt.

“I will never be the same after reading Huna.” —Javier Zamora
“A beautifully written portrait of a radical political awakening.” —Hanif Abdurraqib
“The work of a truly liberated writer.” —Fady Joudah

“The story of political resistance, survival, and liberation in the face of authoritarianism.”—National Book Award Judges’ Citation

One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year • A Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Book

In 2013, seventeen-year-old Abdelrahman ElGendy was a budding student activist in Cairo. Two years after the January 25 revolution, hope for a free Egypt had dissipated; when that summer’s military coup unleashed unprecedented massacres of protesters, Abdelrahman didn’t hesitate—he joined the street movement. His father, fearing for his son’s safety, accompanied him to a mass demonstration. But minutes after they arrived, they were swept up in a brutal police crackdown, and their lives were shattered.

Crushed inside a holding cell, Abdelrahman first heard the words of the Arab world’s most enduring protest song, “Sawfa Nabqa Huna”—We Will Remain Here. He wondered: If no one wanted to remain behind bars, what was the “here” they chose to inhabit?

Abdelrahman would spend the next six years as a political prisoner chasing this Huna, shuffled, alongside his father, from jail cell, to pre-trial detention center, to The Scorpion, Egypt’s most infamous prison complex. As his body broke under the grind of incarceration with no end in sight, he turned to the only refuge left to him: the page. He earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering while imprisoned, read and wrote voraciously, and, through writing, bore witness.

In his remarkable debut, Abdelrahman offers not a promise of hope, but a provocation. When the very things that can save you—tenderness, family, friendship, language—are used against you, how can you find the courage to love? Huna is a reckoning with what it takes—and what it costs—to remain when erased, and of what endures, perhaps more faithfully, beyond hope.