Omar Robert Hamilton

Omar Robert Hamilton is a British-Egyptian filmmaker and novelist born in 1984. He studied at SOAS, University of London, and has lived and worked in Cairo, London, and New York. He is a co-founder of the Cinema Politica network and the Mosireen media collective in Cairo, which documented the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The City Always Wins (2017, Faber & Faber) is his debut novel, set during the Egyptian Revolution and its brutal aftermath, following Mariam and Khalil — journalists and activists — through the exhilaration of Tahrir Square and the crushing of the revolution by military coup. The novel is notable for its collective portrait of a generation of activists and media workers and its refusal to sentimentalise political hope. It won the Betty Trask Prize in 2018. Hamilton is also a documentary filmmaker whose work includes Tahrir 2011: The Good, the Bad and the Politician (2011).