Hellyer - A Revolution Undone

Dr H.A. Hellyer is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Centre for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council in DC and an Associate Fellow in International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London. His insights on current events in the Arab World, Europe, and Muslim communities worldwide are regularly sought by the international media networks such as CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera, with several hundred op-eds for publications including The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The Guardian, The National (Abu Dhabi), and Daily News Egypt.

Prior to joining the Council, Dr Hellyer was a nonresident Fellow at the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in DC and Research Associate at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. He also served as the first Arab world-based Senior Practice Consultant at the Gallup Organisation, where he analysed public opinion data in a variety of countries in the Arab world and the West. During his tenure at the University of Warwick (UK) as Fellow and then Senior Research Fellow, he was appointed as Deputy Convenor of the UK Governments Taskforce for the 2005 London bombings, and served as the Foreign & Commonwealth Offices first Economic and Social Research Council Fellow as part of the Islam & Counter-Terrorism teams.

Alongside his analytical career, Dr Hellyer has held positions at noted institutions including the University of Warwick, the American University in Cairo, and the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies of the University of Oxford, where he authored several books and monographs & has contributed more than twenty-five book chapters and journal articles to various presses. Recent publications include Muslims of Europe: The Other Europeans for Edinburgh University Press and Engagement with the Muslim Community & Counter-Terrorism: British Lessons for the West for Brookings Institution Press.

Dr Hellyers degree in law was read at the University of Sheffield School of Law, with an advanced degree in international political economy at the University of Sheffields Department of Politics. He completed a multidisciplinary PhD at the University of Warwick as an Economic and Social Research Council scholar, and researched Islamic thought with traditionally trained specialists in the UK, Egypt, Malaysia and South Africa.

www.hahellyer.com

H.A. Hellyer is eminently qualified to inform, and interpret these punishing years since 2011 which have polarised Egypt and left many searching for certainties. Theres an academics rigour, a pollsters precision, and a journalists compelling anecdotes in his chronicle of Egypts unfinished revolution. Committed to the principles of that peaceful protest, he doesnt shirk from holding everyone to account: from the revolutionaries who failed to follow through; the Muslim Brotherhood which fell from grace and power; and a military which played a pivotal role throughout. Egypts story is still being written. But five years on, this book puts down an important marker.

Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent, BBC

Attempting to follow the extraordinary tumult in Egypt has often felt like wading through a dense fog. It takes an assured and skilful navigator to plot a constructive path through the gloom and shine a light where it is needed most. Hellyer is just such a navigator: thoughtful, perceptive and above all committed to the promise of revolution, even as he spells out with intellectual honesty and historical nuance where those fighting for a more democratic Egypt have gone wrong. His analysis is an antidote to lazy stereotypes and reductive binaries, and today it is more important than ever.

Jack Shenker, former Egypt correspondent for The Guardian; author of The Egyptians: A Radical Story

H.A. Hellyer has written an inimitable book. Specialists and general readers alike will benefit hugely from the accounts exquisitely related by an insider and a fair observer in one. Hellyers organic link to Egypt and consciously impartial perspective produce a unique combination that we should appreciate, as many of the books published on the subject tend to lean towards one view or one side. His writings have long made clear his consistent and balanced insightand in this book, Hellyer lets no one off the hook, calling all to account.

Hassan Hassan, Associate Fellow of Chatham House; author of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror

A Revolution Undone represents the most authoritative, thoughtful, and nuanced account to date of Egypts 2011 revolution and its aftermath. The book is replete with the kind of unique insight that emerges only from direct proximity to the events it describes. Hellyers is a voice of studious integrity, allowing the book to achieve the near impossible when it comes to analysing Egyptian politics today: balance and perspective. A bold, defining, andultimatelyhopeful statement on the Arab Spring that should be read by anyone interested in the future of the Middle East.

Peter Mandaville, Professor of International Affairs at George Mason University; author of Islam and Politics

Throughout the tumultuous events of 20112015, H.A. Hellyer has been a lucid but hardly dispassionate analyst. Now he has written a book presenting that period that draws on the same assets as his contemporaneous analyses: he writes from the heart but without losing a touch of his clear-headed thinking. Those who remember only a confused tumble of events will find a sure guide, but even those who recall these events well will learn from his book.

Nathan J Brown, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University

It is hard to imagine a better qualified analyst of recent Egyptian history than H.A. Hellyer: a British political scientist of Egyptian heritage, conversant in the modern history of Islamic thought, equipped with the most credible public opinion polling, well-connected with a broad circle of activists and diplomats, and a Cairo resident who personally lived through the upheavals of both 2011 and 2013. Hellyer started out cautious about the first protests in 2011 but he came to identify what he calls Egypts revolutionary current as its best hope, and his honest and probing account of those events will be a great resource for future students of that history.

David D. Kirkpatrick, correspondent for The New York Times and its Cairo bureau chief from 20112015

H.A. Hellyer has written a deeply knowledgeable and personal set of reflections on the Egyptian revolution and its grim aftermath. It is impossible to read this book and not come away with a sense of the spirit that drove the young people of Tahrir Square in the early days of 2011, and which drives many Egyptians still. Many books have been written with the words Egypt and Revolution in their titles, but this is the only one worth reading.

Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Associate Professor of International Relations at Harvard University; author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class and Elections in Egypt

A Revolution Undone combines in the most revealing of ways both the authors participatory observations and his analytical skill in tackling questions of politics, religion and human rights. This is a persuasive analysis of the structural realities hindering democratic governance in this most populous country in the Middle East.

Amr Hamzawy, Associate Professor, Department of Public Policy and Administration at the American University in Cairo; author of A Marginfor Democracy in Egypt: The Story of An Unsuccessful Transition