Biographers in Conversation Interview: Lamisse Hamouda

'The Shape of Dust'

On Thursday, Lamisse Hamouda, winner of the 2024 National Biography Award, will chat with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting The Shape of Dust. This deeply disturbing account is co-written with her father, Hazem Hamouda. It chronicles Hazem’s wrongful arrest in Egypt and Lamisse’s desperate 443-day struggle to free him from Tora, one of Egypt’s most notorious prisons.

The Shape of Dust offers a dual narrative that captures the unspeakable horror of Lamisse’s and Hazem’s ordeal and their fight for justice.

In The Shape of Dust, Lamisse describes her experiences of consular inertia and systemic corruption. She also reveals significant human rights abuses, injustice and the silencing power of violence and fear. Shouldering the responsibility of her father’s welfare, Lamisse learns to navigate deeply flawed systems. Freeing Hazem involves a reckoning with the two countries she’s called home. She faces the prejudice and racism of the country in which she grew up and the corruption in the country with which she was hoping to reconnect.