While he has never joined a political party, he has provided political advice since January 2011 to Egyptian democratic political groups and presidential candidates. Between 2011 and 2013, the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Nabil El-Araby, asked him to coordinate an ‘Independent Panel on Restructuring the Arab League’, chaired by Lakhdar Brahimi, and to write its report. Fishere supported the removal of Muslim Brothers from power in June 2013, claiming that they have used democratic means to establish a religious authoritarian rule, and hoped that the new transitional period (which followed the removal of the Muslim Brothers from power) would lead Egypt along the way of democratic transformation. He accepted to serve as an independent member (and chair) of a short-lived government committee to monitor democratic transition (September – November 2013). But when that government issued a controversial protest law restricting freedom of expression, he publicly denounced it. Fishere continued to denounce authoritarianism in his writings but withdrew from active public life since the election of General Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi as president in May 2014. In September 2016, he moved to the United States where he teaches Middle East politics at Dartmouth College. He continues to write fiction and political opinion pieces, notably in the Washington Post. Novels Fishere's first novel, The Killing of Fakhredine (مقتل فخرالدين) was published without fanfare in 1995 and remained unnoticed until 2009 when, together with the rest of Fishere's literary work, it drew the attention of the public and critics alike. The novel narrates the quasi-mythical life of Fakhredine, who disappeared mysteriously in a Cairo slum in the early 1990s. After an official investigation fails to substantiate rumours that he was assassinated by security forces, the chief investigator decides to pursue the matter privately. Mixing the past and present, reality with mythical and prophetical accounts, we are drawn into a world of disturbing and conflicting testimonies about the life, and earlier ‘deaths’ of Fakhredine. The novel has been reprinted several times since 2009. Pharaonic Journeys (أسفار الفراعين) was published in 1999. Interweaving the stories of nine characters trapped in an endless journey inside and outside Egypt, this novel narrates their attempts to deal with an imaginary apocalyptic Egypt that is stricken by environmental disasters, epidemics, social decay and abject poverty – all exacerbated by the repression of a failed state. Pharaonic Journeys, though apparently a hymn to the loss of hope, is