After the 2011 Revolution in Egypt, successive post-Mubarak regimes initially derived their legitimacy from the January 25 uprising. Over the following decade, however, their position shifted, visible not only through application of repressive measures but also through subtler strategies such as revisions to memorial day celebrations, architectural alterations and production of local television dramas, aimed at altering—or even erasing—the memory of the revolution. Although the revolution’s memorial day remains an official holiday in Egypt, its memory has been deliberately pushed into the background, promoting forgetting rather than remembrance.

Nevertheless, the revolution’s legacy is still kept alive in contemporary fiction, which can be seen as a source of oppositional memory against both oversimplified and propaganda-laden hegemonic narratives. By resisting instant interpretation, such works encourage slower, more reflective forms of remembrance. Novels by Egyptian writers such as ‘Alā’ al-Aswānī, Nā’il al-Ṭūkhī, Yasmine El Rashidi, Yūsuf Rakhā, and others provide an alternative to dominant portrayals of the revolutionary period that shape collective memory, employing techniques such as polyphonic voices, silence, and attention to the quotidian dimensions of everyday life to complicate and subvert official narratives and cultivate a more nuanced, slower memory of the past.

Katarína Bešková is a research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia. She studied Arabic and English at Comenius University in Bratislava, where she also completed her Ph.D. studies in Arabic literature. In 2021/2022 and in 2025, she was a guest researcher at ISA, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research explores the interconnections between modern and contemporary Arabic fiction and society, with a particular focus on memory and trauma.