Khaled Lotfy appeal rejected, Tanmia excluded from Cairo Book Fair

On 24 December 2019, Khaled Lotfy’s final possible appeal against his five-year sentence was rejected. His publishing house was then excluded from the biggest book fair in Egypt. 

Egypt: gagging authors signals worrying backslide to pre-Arab-Spring authoritarianism

This week’s jailing of Egyptian author Ahmed Naji over a book deemed too explicit is further proof that Egypt is squandering the gains of the Arab Spring and regressing to the same authoritarianism that sparked the revolution, the International Publishers Association (IPA) warned today.

Alaa Al Aswany: copyright and human rights go together

Alaa Al Aswany is the Arab world’s bestselling novelist. We spoke to him about the precarious situation for writers in countries, like Egypt, without proper copyright protection.