Ahmed Naji

Ahmed Naji is a bilingual writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and official criminal from Egypt. His novels are Rogers (2007), Using Life (2014), And Tigers to My Room (2020), Happy Endings (2023), and most recently, a memoir, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison (McSweeney’s 2023), which was a Finalist at the National Book Critic Circle. Presently he is exiled in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is the editor most recently of Egypt +100 from Comma Press.

5 July, 2024 • Ahmed Naji

Dune in 2024: A World Beyond Saving

The meta-narrative in Frank Herbert's Dune trilogy foresees the modern disaster of never-ending colonialism and a planet destroyed by oil.

20 June, 2022 • Ahmed Naji

Traps and Shadows in Noor Naga’s Egypt Novel

Ahmed Naji reviews "If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English" just out from Graywolf.

15 June, 2022 • Ahmed Naji, Rana Asfour

“Godshow.com”—a short story by Ahmed Naji

The Egyptian novelist and author of "Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison" finds versions of Islam in the Nevada desert.

15 January, 2022 • Ahmed Naji, Rana Asfour

Taming the Immigrant: Musings of a Writer in Exile

Former prisoner and Egyptian writer in exile Ahmed Naji contemplates what it means to be a "brown writer" in exile in America.

14 June, 2021 • Ahmed Naji, Rana Asfour

I Love Wasta, Hate Standing in Line in Egypt, But I Am Poor

After surviving an Egyptian prison and obtaining asylum in the United States, Ahmed Naji contemplates wasta and standing in line.