by Yasmin El-Rifae
Verso Books
8/25/2026, paperback
SKU: 9781839767692
A haunting, intimate account of the women and men who built a feminist revolution in the middle of the Arab Spring
During the final months of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, a group of activists came together to intervene in the mob sexual assaults recurring amid the ongoing protests of Tahrir Square. The organization was called Opantish, and Yasmin El-Rifae was one of the organizers. This is her surgical, searching, and harrowing account of frontline battles, back-alley escapes, supply lines, and safe houses, as well as the personal and political reckonings that followed.
In a new preface, El-Rifae reflects on what her extraordinary experiences demonstrate when placed within the long history of imperial violence in the region.
Reviews:
"This book is one of the most powerful reports on rescue work done in a revolutionary war zone that I have ever read; and the fact that it is work done by women on behalf of other women who've been sexually harassed (to put it mildly) not by the enemy but by their fellow revolutionaries makes it all the more gripping. I wish Radius a long life, with dazzling reviews and an ever-increasing readership." --Vivian Gornick, author of Taking a Long Look
"The writing is beautiful and clean, carrying readers through harrowing and heartbreaking moments....This account of a brave, generous, and largely unacknowledged enterprise is not only an essential record of modern Egyptian history; it's a testament to what women are capable of, to what can be achieved through passionate collective action." --Ursula Lindsey, New York Review of Books
"A unique account of a feminist revolutionary moment from the inside. Yasmin El-Rafae somehow manages to convey in graphic detail the inspirational struggle to protect women from the sexual violence that erupted at the heart of the Arab Spring, while remaining true to the difficulties and pain that can arise within any such movement, the whole story framed by her own first steps into the no less complex reality of motherhood. Beautifully negotiating the terrain between public and private worlds for women, Radius is a feminist manifesto for our times." --Jacqueline Rose, author of The Plague
About the Author:
Yasmin El-Rifae is a writer, editor, and co-producer of the Palestine Festival of Literature. She works with Cairo's independent Mada Masr newspaper, and her writing has also appeared in LitHub, The Nation, and Lux magazine, among other places. This is her first book.