Abdelrahman ElGendy

Abdelrahman ElGendy, who spent six years as a political prisoner in post-revolutionary Egypt, discusses his memoir Huna, which reflects on his extraordinary period of incarceration. 

In 2013, when he was just 17, ElGendy was a budding student activist in Cairo. Two years after the 25 January revolution, hope for a free Egypt had dissipated; when that summer’s military coup unleashed massacres on protesters, ElGendy 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. 

In his debut book, ElGendy asks: when the very tenderness that can save you is used against you, how can you find the courage to love? Huna is a powerful reckoning with what it takes – and what it costs – to remain when erased, and what endures, perhaps more faithfully, beyond hope.

Abdelrahman ElGendy is an author and translator from Cairo. Winner of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award in 2024, he holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, and his work appears in publications including the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and Guernica.