Books from Egypt

At seventeen, Abdelrahman ElGendy is arrested during Egypt’s political upheaval and spends six years imprisoned alongside his father. Amid brutal conditions and an uncertain future, he turns to writing as an act of survival and resistance. Both an intimate memoir of family, friendship, and endurance and a powerful indictment of authoritarianism, Huna asks what it means to hold on to your humanity when the world tries to erase you.

For Nawal El Saadawi, speaking openly about women’s oppression came at a personal cost: censorship, imprisonment, threats, and eventually exile. Yet she refused to surrender her voice. In Walking Through Fire, El Saadawi continues the story of her extraordinary life, recounting her years as a physician, writer, and activist in a society where challenging political and religious authority could be dangerous. She describes her efforts to establish women’s organisations and publish feminist writing, the threats that forced her into exile, and the personal struggles that accompanied her public resistance. The memoir reveals the woman behind the internationally recognised intellectual: passionate, questioning, and sometimes conflicted, but determined to live according to her convictions. Through recollections of marriage, motherhood, political repression, and the fight for justice, she explores what it means to remain independent in the face of relentless pressure. A testament to intellectual courage and personal freedom, the book documents a life spent confronting the forces that sought to silence her.