Description

A gripping, deeply moving memoir of survival, education, and resistance.

Longlisted for the 2026 National Book Award

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 beyond hope.

Publisher Review

‘Call it a manual on schooling the self, a deployment of fury to romp through prison life, a philosophical meditation, a love poem to family, friends and a fruit worm. ElGendy has gifted us a book like no other. Read it and be moved, delighted, informed and wiser.’ Ahdaf Soueif, author of Cairo: My City, Our Revolution ‘Huna is extraordinary. ElGendy has written a powerful and intimate memoir that will no doubt secure its place in the canon of prison diaries. With razor-sharp prose, ElGendy evokes the claustrophobia of prison cells and Kafkaesque bureaucracy, the vulnerability and camaraderie of inmates, the enduring and unconditional love of family, and the horrors of the political trajectory in Egypt. This book broke me apart and put me back together again.’ Tareq Baconi, author of Fire in Every Direction ‘A work of masterful, uncompromising music, Abdelrahman ElGendy’s Huna sings to what is terrified and tender inside all of us. In exquisite prose, ElGendy plunges us into the nightmare of incarceration, only to carry us far beyond – into a complex and teeming world in which souls both break and become. Unforgettable and riven with love, this book not only confronts the shared captivity of this age – it whispers to the beauty pressed within the walls, the secret yearnings of our own, unfinished homecomings. More than a political coming-of-age, more than a call to courageous struggle – Huna is a miracle.’ Sarah Aziza, author of The Hollow Half

‘Within the tender fury of this book is the poetry of a better world. Unswerving and intimate, it is the story of a prison nightmare told in pursuit of collective freedom. A moving act of resistance.’ Khalid Abdalla ‘You don’t read Huna, you live it, savor it, bite, suck up each word – the taste in your mouth? An untranslatable term Abdelrahman ElGendy teaches us, qahr: an injustice, rage, helplessness, but also a divine retribution. In Abdelrahman ElGendy’s hands, the brutal, idiotic DNA of authoritarianism has no chance, its grip is futile. ElGendy has purposely sweetened the nightmare, I hope readers learn the lesson. I will never be the same after reading Huna – a pivotal addition to world literature.’ Javier Zamora, author of Solito ‘Huna is a beautifully written portrait of a radical political awakening – a portrait that does not prioritise the harms and brutalities of the state, even though they are endured. But a portrait that, instead, affords an immense patience and dignity to the land and its people. To the heart and its ferocity. To all of the things that turn a person towards rigorous and principled action.’ Hanif Abdurraqib, author of There’s Always This Year ‘This riveting, extraordinary work communicates the literal experience of being a political prisoner within the emotional life of injustice. Abdelrahman ElGendy brings us closer to the physical suffering, the intellectual hunger, the deep friendships, the modes of survival, the petty brutalities of state players – not only of the regime of Egypt’s General Sisi, but of its resonance today in the United States.’ Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse ‘Abdelrahman ElGendy has written a masterpiece. Huna transforms six years of wrongful imprisonment into a work of profound literary beauty. With extraordinary clarity, compassion, and intelligence, ElGendy takes us inside the brutal machinery of repression in Egypt’s carceral state while never losing sight of the fragile, stubborn humanity that survives within it. Few books bridge the intimate and the political with such grace and insight. A searing indictment of injustice, a deeply humane meditation on survival, and an unforgettable work of literature.’ Saleem Haddad, author of Floodlines