Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming by Elgendy, Abdelrahman

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

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

"The story of political resistance, survival, and liberation in the face of authoritarianism."--National Book Award Judges' Citation

One of Publishers Weekly's 10 Most Anticipated Books of the Year - A Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Book

In 2013, two years after the January 25 revolution, seventeen-year-old Abdelrahman ElGendy was a budding student activist in Cairo. Hope for a free Egypt had dissipated, and 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.

Author: Abdelrahman Elgendy
Publisher: Hogarth Press
Published: 09/01/2026
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.90lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.60w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9798217153602

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2026
Publishers Weekly 07/20/2026
Booklist 08/01/2026

About the Author
Abdelrahman ElGendy is an author and translator from Cairo. A winner of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award, 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. His poetry and prose translations from Arabic appear in Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, Literary Hub, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. ElGendy's work has received awards or fellowships from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Heinz Foundation, the de Groot Foundation, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Arab American National Museum. Huna is his debut memoir.