You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a collection of Alaa’s essays, social media posts and interviews from 2011 until the present. He has spent the majority of those years in prison, where many of the pieces were written. Together, they present not only a unique account from the frontline of a decade of global upheaval, but a catalogue of ideas about other futures those upheavals could yet reveal. From theories on technology and history to painful reflections on the meaning of prison, You Have Not Yet Been Defeated is a book about the importance of ideas, whatever their cost.

With a Foreword by Naomi Klein.

A new special edition will be published in October 2024 as part of the UK publisher, Fitzcarraldo Editions, First Decade Collection. This is a beautiful hardback edition with a very limited print run of 1,000. PRE-ORDER HERE.

 

‘Don’t read this book to be comforted. Read it to be challenged, terrified, enlightened, moved, and amazed.’
— Kamila Shamsie

‘The text you are holding is living history. ... It must be read for the precision of its language, for its bold experimentations with form and style, and for the endlessly original ways its author finds to express disdain for tyrants, liars and cowards. Most of all, it must be read for what Alaa has to tell us about revolutions – why most fail, what it feels like when they do, and, perhaps, how they might still succeed.’
– Naomi Klein

‘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 is a philosopher of everyday life and life-long struggle; he doesn’t merely find meaning in that which we go through, especially in dark political moments, but creates meaning and gives it form in writing. And he does so from a highly entrenched and implicated place in the present. His thoughts know no frontiers; they pierce through local contexts to inspire new modes of thinking about the chaotic substance of politics.’

– Lina Attalah, editor in chief of Mada Masr

‘Alaa is in prison not because he committed a crime, not because he said too much, but because his very existence poses a threat to the state. Those who are bold, those who do not relent, will always threaten the terrified and ultimately weak state which must, to survive, squash its opponents like flies.’
– Jillian C. York, director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

WHERE TO ORDER ALAA’S BOOK*
eBook
Belgium
Canada, Toronto
Canada, Vancouver
Egypt
France
Italy
Germany
Lebanon
Netherlands
Palestine
Switzerland
UK
USA

*or who to contact asking them to stock it…