Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming
Published by Hogarth / Penguin Random House
Sep 01, 2026
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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
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.
PRAISE
“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, Whiting Award winner and New York Times bestselling author of Solito
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“Huna is a beautifully written portrait of a radical political awakening—a portrait that does not prioritize 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, MacArthur Fellow and New York Times bestselling author of There’s Always This Year
“Riveting, cinematic memory and poetic prose. ElGendy’s soulful attention to detail and method is the work of a truly liberated writer. Huna is much more than ‘prison writing.’ It showcases ElGendy’s instinctive mastery of the hybrid modes of Arabic narrative. But also, dear reader, do not assume that you are outside the prison cell reading another’s story and not your own in the West. This, too, is part of the genius of Huna.”—Fady Joudah, Guggenheim Fellow and Jackson Poetry Prize-winning author of […] and Exhibit G
“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, Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
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“Huna is a clandestine letter, a lyrical act of resistance, and a transcendent song in the darkness. ElGendy recounts his political imprisonment and journey to critical consciousness with unflinching honesty, masterful precision, and radical love. His story is a compassionate call to courage, reminding us of the often-quoted but unheeded truth: None of us is free until we all are.”—Nadia Owusu, Whiting Award-winning author of Aftershocks
“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
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“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, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award-winning author of The Hollow Half​
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“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, Polari Prize-winning author of Floodlines and Guapa
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“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
“Abdelrahman ElGendy’s memoir Huna offers a powerful map of interconnected practices of resistance to surveillance, state violence, and the repression of political speech. A vital entry in the long tradition of narratives of political imprisonment, Huna reminds us that freedom is first in the mind.”—Zeyn Joukhadar, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of The Thirty Names of Night and The Map of Salt and Stars
“In documenting the arbitrary brutality of Egypt’s carceral system, ElGendy illuminates the plight of thousands of political prisoners suffering just out of sight. This memoir is a testament to the conscience they preserve in the darkest cells of the nation. It is a battle cry for their liberation.”
—Noor Naga, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize-winning author of If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English
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“ElGendy sculpts his story with reverence for both the craft and the saving power of writing, pulling it taut between demoralizing legal appeals, the ingenuity and solidarity of prisoners, and the shifting poles of what is and is not acceptable in a life lived on the inside. This is the story of oppression by and resistance to a cruel power and an unjust prison sentence, pierced through with the gentle love of a son finding tenderness for his father in a situation riddled with guilt, depravity, and shame. Fearless and elegant—an uncompromising work from a new author with a mighty voice.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
