Arundhati Roy shares
PEN Pinter Prize 2024 with Alaa

Thursday 10 October 2024: Alaa Abd el-Fattah is named Writer of Courage 2024.

The Writer of Courage is awarded to an author who is active in defence of freedom of expression, often at great risk to their own safety and liberty, and shares the PEN Pinter Prize with the winner.

The winner of the PEN Pinter Prize 2024, Arundhati Roy, made the announcement in an address at the British Library this evening, where she was joined by Naomi Klein who delivered an encomium. Alaa Abd el-Fattah was selected by Roy as her co-winner, in cooperation with English PEN. 

SPECIAL EDITION OF ALAA’S BOOK

A limited edition of Alaa’s book will be published in the UK on October 24th.

“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 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.”

Take Action

Olivia Colman, Carey Mulligan, Mark Ruffalo, Rebecca Hall, Richard Ratcliffe, Morgan Spector and Khalid Abdalla all read from Alaa's essay, "Half an Hour with Khaled" - which he wrote when his son was born, and brought to visit him for the first time in prison. 

Listen to Alaa’s book on Radio Papesse

 

Read (with) Alaa

On April 2, 2022 Alaa embarked on an open-ended hunger strike as a last bid for freedom. His intermediate demands are simple: To improve the basic conditions of his imprisonment in Torah’s Maximum Security Prison. A key demand is the right to receive books. 

Over the soon to be 1,000 days Alaa has been deprived of many elementary things: fresh air, sun, exercise, ways of telling time, touch. His contact to the outside world is limited to a single visit by one immediate family member, for twenty minutes, once a month, from behind a glass wall. In past imprisonment, reading was the only hope-providing activity. Reading is a survival tactic for many prisoners. Sanaa, Alaa’s sister, speaks of how reading was critical to her own mental health and survival in prison, by allowing her to gain control over time and to escape through thought and fiction.  

With this campaign we want to amplify reading as a human right. We want to take this opportunity to read with Alaa, to share books, actually and phantasmally, with him as well as others in need of reading themselves beyond carceral systems worldwide. 

We are reading Alaa to a believable world, and to freedom. We invite you to express your solidarity for Alaa’s survival and safe release. 

 

  • Choose a book you want to share with Alaa.

  • Take a snapshot of the book and post it to social media with the hashtags #ReadAlaa #FreeAlaa #SaveAlaa

  • This is optional. If you wish to share a book with Alaa write to us at computationalpoetics@gmail.com and we will provide you with a mailing address.

 
 

Sanaa at the Oslo Freedom Forum

 
 

Watch Now: Online Book Launch

 
 

Naomi Klein, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Sanaa Seif and Sharif Abdel Kouddous came together for a wide-ranging, internationalist and emotionally moving conversation about Alaa and his work.

 

#FreeAlaa

Good morning @jamescleverly #FreeAlaa
This is amazing from @greenpeaceuk - thank you💚 @jamescleverly will you come out to meet Sanaa? In ten months the British government has failed to even gain consular access for Alaa. On the inside, he is doing everything he can, he’s been on
Alaa’s 10-year old son Khaled visited the sit-in today. He hasn’t seen Alaa for almost a year now - the conditions of the maximum security prison Alaa was in before he was moved in May this year had become too unsuitable for a child to vi
Thank you @gretathunberg @mitzijonelle and @can.international for your solidarity with thousands of arbitrarily detained prisoners in #Egypt and their families, like Alaa and his sisters Sanaa and Mona. No Climate Justice without Human Rights and op
On Day 200 of his hunger strike, and with only 20 days until world lands in #Egypt for #COP27, Alaa's little sister is starting a sit-in at the UK Foreign Office until the government takes serious action to #SaveAlaa Come down any day to pass by her
Alaa’s little sister Sanaa has been imprisoned 3 times in her struggle to free her brother. If there was ever a doubt the love is one of the greatest political forces, read today’s moving feature in the Guardian by Michael Segalov on Sana
🚨Join us next Tuesday 18th October outside the Foreign Office to call for the government to step their up efforts for Alaa’s release!🚨 On 18th October, Alaa will have reached the cruel milestone of 200 days on hunger strike. The first fifty