Gaza, 2035

Author: Haytham El-Wardany

Publisher: Cutt Press (2024)

Haytham el-Wardany is an Egyptian writer and translator. He lives and works in Berlin, and writes short stories and experimental prose. His praxis focuses on fiction, especially short stories, and nonfiction formats, like essays, and fragmental prose. Reflecting on the experiences and aftermath of protests and uprisings in Egypt and the surrounding region, el-Wardany’s work explores what it means to live together. His current research concerns examining the fugitive and fragile spaces where the process of inheriting a (traumatic) past can take place. ‘Banat Awa and The Missing Letters,’ was published in Arabic in January 2023. It considers forgotten expressions of hope within Arabic fables—where animals speak and humans listen—as crucial to a moment of post “Arab Spring” speechlessness. In previous publications, including The Book of Sleep (Al-Karma 2017, Seagull Books 2020, by Robin Moger) and How to Disappear (Kayfa ta 2013-2017), el-Wardany has examined the agency and potential of passivity, through regimes of listening and the dialectics of sleep and vigilance amid social protests.