Letters from the Square

When seventeen-year-old Ra’is and his family join the crowds in Tahrir Square in January 2011, the public uprising they take part in finally topples their country’s thirty-year dictatorship. But the afterglow of victory is short-lived. Fresh protests break out in Cairo and internal divisions fracture the newly elected democratic government, and the country falls under military rule. After a shocking massacre in a public square, Ra’is struggles to come to terms with the bloodshed and the deaths of two close friends. Soon after, his own family is plunged into an unexpected nightmare of loss and despair when an arrest in the middle of the night shatters their world. Based on true events spanning a decade from 2011 onwards, the novel weaves through a series of protests, interlaced with anonymous letters from a prisoner—whose identity is only revealed at the end of the book. As a story of a collective fight for justice under a corrupt dictatorship, 'Letters from the Square' provokes the reader to position oneself amid the ever increasing polarization, division and decay in our own societies.