Ezzedine Choukri Fishere () (born 1966 in Kuwait City) is an Egyptian novelist, diplomat and academic.
Early life and career
Ezzedine was born to Egyptian parents working in Kuwait. At the age of two, he returned to Egypt with his mother and siblings while his father stayed back in Kuwait to support the family. Fishere grew up in Mansura, a quiet town by the Nile. Bright at school, he graduated from Mansoura Secondary School in Dakahlia at the age of 16 and was among the top ten students in the country (1983). In 1987, he graduated from the political science department at Cairo University, and joined Al-Ahram Centre for Political Studies. Two years later, he had completed his military service and joined the Foreign Service. In 1992, he obtained an International Diploma in Administration from École Nationale d'Administration in Paris, then a Masters in International Relations in 1995 from the University of Ottawa, and finally a PhD in political science from Université de Montréal in 1998
Fishere worked intermittently as an Egyptian diplomat. In 1989, he served in the cabinet of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel from 1999 to 2001, and as a counselor to the Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit from 2005 to 2007. He also worked as a political advisor to the United Nations Special Envoy to the Middle East during the Second Intifada (2001-2004). He then joined the UN Advance Mission to Sudan UNAMIS and contributed to establishing the first UN peacekeeping mission in that country after the signing of the Naivasha peace agreement in 2005. During his year in Sudan, Fishere served as the UN's focal point for the Darfur negotiations in Addis Ababa, Ndjamena and Abuja. Fishere also served as the political advisor to the 2004 UN fact-finding mission to Lebanon investigating the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
In 2007, Fishere left the diplomatic service and started teaching political science at the American University in Cairo He also wrote frequently for the press, both in Arabic and in English.
When Egyptians took to Tahrir Square en masse in 2011, Fishere joined the revolutionary wave and became one of its most recognisable faces as an analyst, political adviser to key presidential candidates and a widely-read columnist.
In 2011, the first Transitional Government asked him to lead the "Supreme Council for Culture" with a view to restructuring it. 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.