Book Launch + Conversation: Manual of Hope - Alaa Abd el-Fattah 'You Have Not Yet Been Defeated'

Prison works that evade characterisation as speculative theory or by-products of praxis are often manuals for revolution, manuals for survival, and ultimately manuals for hope.

To mark the publication of You Have Not Yet Been Defeated. Selected Works 2011-2021 (Translated by a collective, foreword by Naomi Klein, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021) by Alaa Abd el-Fattah, one of Egypt’s longest imprisoned political activists, the event features recorded and live readings by writers Naomi Klein and Ahdaf Soueif, poet Seán Hewitt and sociologist-activist Ronit Lentin as well as a discussion between Annie Fletcher, director of IMMA and Hussein Omar, historian of political ideas.

Hussein Omar is Lecturer in Global History at University College Dublin; Annie Fletcher is Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art; Seán Hewitt is a poet, critic and lecturer. His book J.M. Synge: Nature, Politics, Modernism was recently published with Oxford University Press (2021); Ronit Lentin is a political sociologist. She has published widely on Palestine and Israel, racism and immigration in Ireland, and on gender and genocide.

This event takes place as part of Dublin Art Book Fair 2021: Manual, sponsored by Henry J Lyons and supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature.