Searching for Sense in Senselessness

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh:

In February 2016, Ahmed Naji was sentenced to two years in prison for “violating public decency,” after an excerpt of his novel Using Life reportedly caused a reader to experience heart palpitations. Naji ultimately served ten months of that sentence, in a group cellblock in Cairo’s Tora Prison. In this program, we welcome Ahmed to City of Asylum to share his latest work, Rotten Evidence, a memoir which chronicles those ten months.

Through Naji’s writing, the world of Egyptian prison comes into vivid focus, with its cigarette-based economy, homemade chess sets, and well-groomed fixers. Naji’s storytelling is lively and uncompromising, filled with rare insights into both the mundane and grand questions he confronts. How does one secure a steady supply of fresh vegetables without refrigeration? How does one write and revise a novel in a single notebook? Fight boredom? Build a clothes hanger? Negotiate with the chief of intelligence? And, most crucially, how does one make sense of a senseless oppression: finding oneself in prison for the act of writing fiction? Genuine and defiant, Rotten Evidence stands as a testament to the power of the creative mind, in the face of authoritarian censorship.

This reading is followed by an audience Q&A moderated by Abdelrahman ElGendy and a book signing. You can purchase your own copy of Ahmed’s book, Rotten Evidence, at City of Asylum Bookstore.