Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been given the 2024 PEN Writer of Courage award, after being nominated for the accolade by PEN Pinter Prize winner and pri-Palestine writer Arundati Roy. The detained British-Egyptian writer and activist received the award in line with the tradition of the PEN Pinter Prize winner sharing the honour with a ‘Writer of Courage’ — an author “active in defence of freedom of expression”. The 42-year-old remains imprisoned in Egypt, despite having served his five-year sentence for “spreading false news”. “Why did I choose the jailed writer and blogger Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the …