You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

“To read it is to be impressed, over and over, with the writer’s combination of honesty, originality, and humility. It is to be amazed by how often Abd el-Fattah is right, not in the sense that he knows what to do, but in the sense that he so often sees the truth of each messy, polarizing, often hopeless juncture. His writing is sharp and funny, passionate and vulnerable, straining generously to find something useful to say. . . . You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is an invaluable record of events in Egypt in the past decade, of the evolution of a leftist, humanist, internationalist thinker, and of the efforts of a remarkable person not to come undone in the face of overwhelming injustice.”

– Ursula Lindsey, New York Review of Books

“This mosaic of texts builds a picture of both the principles of resistance and democracy-building and the ugly, absurd, frightening, occasionally joyful experience of living by them in a stubbornly unreformed dictatorship. It’s also a reckoning with the legacy of his much-loved father, the human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif el-Islam, who was imprisoned and tortured under Anwar Sadat and Mubarak. “From my father, I inherited a prison cell and a dream,” Abd el-Fattah writes. In 2011, he is in prison for the birth of his son Khaled, just as his father missed the birth of his sister Mona; in 2014, he misses his father’s death, too… But like the success of the revolution in 2011, its defeat isn’t only an Egyptian story. The rest of us are the “you” of the book’s title, and the speech it is drawn from makes a call to understand and protect the internet as a space for “universal rights and freedoms” – to see and act against tax avoidance, policy interference, the gig economy, algorithms that promote fake news, the exploitation of our data, our reduction to passive eyeballs for advertisers. “Fix your own democracy,” Abd el-Fattah encourages us, from his cell; Egypt’s rulers attempt to isolate, fragment and conceal resistance because it needs a global ecosystem to flourish. What can any one person do with a legacy of pain, struggle and courage? There are no easy solutions here, but You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a heartbreaking, hopeful answer.”

– Rachel Aspden, The Guardian

“[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. Ostensibly, the collection seems to be narrowly concerned with Alaa; however, his perspective serves as a lens into contemporary political life in Egypt. As the title suggests, [You Have Not Yet Been Defeated] is an attempt to encourage us to look beyond defeat as a framework for interpreting the events of the January revolution.”

– Nihal El Aasar, Jacobin

“Written with blood and fire, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a brilliant and devastating testament by one of Egypt's great revolutionaries.”

– Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood

“In a totalitarian system where even ideas are punishable with imprisonment, this collection of essays from one of Egypt’s most high-profile political prisoners is like an oasis in a desolate landscape. Part manifesto, part memoir, and part record of some of Abd El-Fattah’s trial scenes that are more than worthy of Kafka, the book contains passages smuggled out from Cairo’s infamous Tora prison.”

– Ruth Michaelson, The Guardian

“You can’t jail a revolution. Alaa Abd el-Fattah is proof. These essays, many handwritten and smuggled from a prison cell, breathe life into the 2011 moment, what shaped its revolutionary possibilities and terrible betrayals. This book is a memory of Tahrir Square that still reverberates like a heartbeat throughout the world.”

– Nick Estes, author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance

“Alaa Abd el-Fattah's 'You Have Not Yet Been Defeated' is both an archive and a blueprint: an archive of a revolution deferred, and a blueprint for bringing the world that it dreamt of into existence. That it succeeds so brilliantly at holding the two together is perhaps the surest sign that its author – and its readers – “have not yet been defeated."”

– The Wire (India)

“Alaa remains incarcerated. The injustice of his condition is condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Office, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch, as well as by many other organizations. He is one of over 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt. What we have of him is this book of reflections and prison notes. It is a necessary read to understand Egypt today, but also worth reading to know Alaa. In a penetrating foreword, Naomi Klein writes, this book “must be read for the precision of its language, for its bold experimentations with form and style, and for the endlessly original ways it author finds to express disdain for tyrants … Most of all, it must be read for what Alaa has to tell us about revolutions.” Ultimately, it is a clear-eyed and moving account of one man’s courage and compassion.”

– Karim Alrawi, Los Angeles Review of Books

“This collection gathers the Egyptian activist’s essays, social media posts and interviews, which were mostly composed while he was incarcerated as a political prisoner, and provide reflections on state violence, Egypt’s constitution and technology.”

– The New York Times Book Review

“Though You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is mainly about Egypt, it is rooted in an internationalist vision. It highlights how, at the core, the Egyptian revolution stood for something greater than nationalist aspirations, finding universal appeal in the calls for freedom and justice for all people. The book speaks to political realities that resonate beyond the country’s borders, and is timely considering the prevalence of enforced disappearances, torture and arbitrary detention across the region.”

– LSE Review of Books

“But as he has been held in solitary confinement, deprived of sunlight as well as access to books, pens, and paper, his family has said that he has almost reached his breaking point: His hunger strike has become his only means of resistance. Ours should be to use the words that we still have to bring attention to his unjust imprisonment and continue the work he tirelessly did.”

– Yasmine El Rashidi, The Atlantic