You Have Not Yet Been Defeated
Alaa Abd el-Fattah
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From the publisher
You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is published here as a limited edition casebound hardback as part of Fitzcarraldo Editions’ First Decade Collection, featuring marbled endpapers and numbered bookplates.
Translated by a collective
Collecting and translating the work of the radical theorist Alaa Abd el-Fattah for the first time in English, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated shot to instant international relevance when Alaa began a hunger strike from his prison cell in Egypt. His powerful writings on democracy, economics and technology – many smuggled out of prison – connected with audiences worldwide and rallied cultural figures, labour unions, climate activists, Nobel laureates and political leaders to the call for his freedom. From theories on technology and history to profound reflections on the meaning of prison, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a book about the importance of ideas, whatever their cost. Though Alaa is still in prison as this book goes to press, his vision for our world in crisis reverberates.
‘The text you are holding is living history.’ Naomi Klein, author of Doppleganger
‘Don’t read this book to be comforted. Read it to be challenged, terrified, enlightened, moved, and amazed.’ Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire
‘Alaa is the bravest, most critical, most engaged citizen of us all. At a time when Egypt has been turned into a large prison, Alaa has managed to cling to his humanity and be the freest Egyptian.’ Khaled Fahmy, author of All The Pasha’s Men
Alaa Abd el-Fattah is an Egyptian writer, technologist and political activist. He has been prosecuted or arrested by every Egyptian regime to rule in his lifetime and has been held in prison for all but a few months since the coup d’état of 2013. Collected here by his family and friends, for the first time in English, are a selection of his speeches, interviews, social media posts and essays since the outbreak of revolution in January 2011 – many written from inside prison.