In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Lamisse Hamouda chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about her choices while crafting The Shape of Dust. This deeply disturbing account is co-written with her father Hazem Hamouda. It chronicles Hazem’s wrongful arrest in Egypt and Lamisse’s desperate 443-day struggle to free him from Tora, one of Egypt’s most notorious prisons.
The heart of justice is truth-telling.
Bell Hooks
Winner: 2024 National Biography Award
Shortlisted: 2024 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards,
Multicultural NSW Award
An incredible true tale of overcoming injustice and ode to the fierce love within one family, ‘The Shape of Dust’ is a haunting appraisal of the way Australia treats its citizens,
both at home and abroad.
The Shape of Dust
The Shape of Dust, which won the National Biography Award in 2024, offers a dual narrative that captures the unspeakable horror of Lamisse’s and Hazem’s ordeal and their fight for justice. In 2018, on his way to a family holiday in Cairo, Australian Egyptian citizen Hazem Hamouda disappears without warning, going missing somewhere between landing and customs.
His eldest daughter, Lamisse, has recently moved to Egypt armed with a scholarship to the American University of Cairo. Overnight, her world is turned upside down. With little Arabic and even less legal knowledge, she finds out her father has been arbitrarily arrested. Going up against the notorious Egyptian prison system, Lamisse discovers that the Australian embassy provides shockingly little support to dual citizens arrested abroad.
A father wrongly imprisoned. A daughter’s quest to free him.
In The Shape of Dust, Lamisse describes her experiences of consular inertia and systemic corruption. She also reveals significant human rights abuses, injustice and the silencing power of violence and fear. Shouldering the responsibility of her father’s welfare, Lamisse learns to navigate deeply flawed systems. Freeing Hazem involves a reckoning with the two countries she’s called home. She faces the prejudice and racism of the country in which she grew up and the corruption in the country with which she was hoping to reconnect.
In the end it will make you angry at the injustices both grand and petty, that run from Cairo to Canberra.
Peter Greste
Told with exquisite intimacy by both father and daughter, The Shape of Dust is an Australian story unlike any other, and the striking debut of a writer of incredible nuance, insight and talent.
The Shape of Dust is a testament to the enduring power of love in the face of unimaginable adversity. In her memoir, Lamisse explores the devastating impact of Hazem’s unjust detention on him and their entire family, and their unwavering love for each other. She also describes the global movement that emerged to free Hazem from Tora.
A tale of determination, devotion and duty told with courage and self-assuredness.’
Jan Fran
Through their shared narrative, Lamisse and Hazem reflect on the fragility of freedom and the human cost of injustice. They also emphasise the critical value of honouring human rights and the enduring power of the human spirit.
‘The Shape of Dust’ is urgent, experimental, self-reflexive.
Dr Melinda Harvey
The Shape of Dust captures Hazem’s and Lamisse’s emotional, psychological and physical ordeal, and places the spotlight on the injustice, systemic corruption and human rights abuses they experienced. The dual narrative structure, with its first-person accounts and present-tense storytelling, immerses readers in Hazem’s and Lamisse’s experiences, making the story both personal and universal.
The Risks of Writing about Trauma
Hazem’s wrongful imprisonment in Egypt is a chilling reminder of the fragility of freedom; the immense power of silencing through violence and fear; and the injustices that can occur within seemingly stable societies.
Through The Shape of Dust, Lamisse and Hazem express their solidarity with others who’ve faced similar injustices, shedding light on the broader issues of state violence and systemic racism. Their story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring quest for justice.
Advice to Authors Writing about Trauma
Lamisse and Hazem’s unwavering love and their determination to share their story serves as an urgent reminder for us all to demand accountability and stand in solidarity with them and anyone else who experiences injustice.
Once Free from Prison: The Horrors of PTSD
Praise for The Shape of Dust
‘The Shape of Dust’ is urgent, experimental, self-reflexive. It bristles with a sense of injustice and trauma and is determined not to reinscribe these indignities in telling the tale. This work will resonate with many Australian readers, including those whose identities are linked to places beyond Australia’s borders.
Dr Melinda Harvey,
Senior Judge, National Biography Awards 2024
Lamisse Hamouda’s ‘The Shape of Dust’ is a must read. Full-blooded and clear-eyed, this book is a deep dive into memories big and small, brutal and joyful, a ruthlessly reflective examination of the many things that bind us – and free us. As Lamisse herself describes, this is an effort to remember, an insistence on dignity, like food shared, like paper flowers made by the hands of prisoners.’
Omar Musa
At its core, ‘The Shape of Dust’ is a love story. A tale of determination, devotion and duty told with courage and self-assuredness.
Jan Fran
This is an extraordinarily brave, honest, and deeply intimate account of a family’s struggle against a brutal bureaucracy. Lamisse somehow manages to be both personal and political, without ever becoming polemic. Their ordeal is painful, their love for one another uplifting. In the end it will make you angry at the injustices both grand and petty, that run from Cairo to Canberra.
Peter Greste
Imbued with hard-earned wisdom, this gripping memoir is as courageous as it is generous.
Sara Saleh
A socio-political critique with intellectual depth and a beautiful literary quality.
Randa Abdel-Fattah
‘Reading this book felt like a punch to the gut and I loved it.
Hella Ibrahim
Father-daughter duo Lamisse and Hazem Hamouda’s debut memoir The Shape of Dust is an impactful picture of one ordinary Australian Egyptian family’s experience as victims of a human rights violation… As the story unfolds between Australia and Egypt, the narrative highlights two important things: the universal humanity of prisoners and the power of recording silenced injustices. The Shape of Dust is an integral read that shares the stories beyond the human rights violations of media headlines and belongs on every bookshelf.
Eman X, Books+Publishing
A beautifully written, deeply personal and devastating account of arbitrary detention in Egypt and a family’s inspirational fight for their father’s freedom. This book is essential reading to understand the difficulties faced by Australians unjustly jailed abroad, the traumatic impact and burden on their families at home, and how to fight for – and win – freedom. It was a privilege to represent Hazem and his family, to work alongside Lamisse in that fight, and it was a privilege to read this book.
Jennifer Robinson, Barrister
The Shape of Dust Interviews, Media Coverage and Podcasts
‘Navigating Two Worlds’ with Dr Lana Tatour at the University of New South Wales, Centre for Ideas
Mornings with ABC: Interview with Jen Robinson & Lamisse Hamouda
Hazem Hamouda’s daughter, Lamisse, talks about her father’s plight in the Cairo jail, The Project
‘Jailed Australian man to return home after release in Cairo’, Herald Sun, 4 April 2019
Lamisse (she/her) is a writer, poet, workshop facilitator and Adjunct Lecturer of the School of Social Science UNSW.
Her first book, The Shape of Dust (Pantera Press, 2023), co-authored with her father, Hazem Hamouda, delves into her father’s experience of being a dual citizen imprisoned abroad. The Shape of Dust won the 2024 National Biography of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Award.
Lamisse is a member with AWADA (Australians Wrongfully Arrested and Detained Abroad) and continues to privately support families of individuals wrongfully detained abroad.
Lamisse is a skilled workshop facilitator and mentor to emerging writers. She has run workshops with organisations such as Queensland Writers Centre, Australian Society of Authors, Melbourne Writers Festival and QUT’s Carumba Institute.
In 2025, Lamisse was awarded a Keesing Studio Residency in Paris to work on her next book.
Hazem Hamodua is a Muslim, Egyptian and Australian I.T Consultant and co-author of The Shape of Dust. In 2018, Hazem was arrested and imprisoned in Egypt, and was held in pre-trial detention for over a year. He was freed in 2019 after a campaign for his release.
He now lives in Brisbane with his family.
Lamisse Hamouda’s Publications
Books
The Shape of Dust, Pantera Press (2023)
National Biography of the Year Award, 2024
NSW Premier’s Literary Award Shortlist 2024
Poetry
Griefscape with Han Reardon-Smith, Runway Journal 48. Edited by Maya Hodge
Here, At Home, Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity. Ed. by Sara Saleh & Randa Abdel-Fattah, Pan Macmillan Press
Select Articles
Prita Tina Yeganeh ✿ My Soil Farsh فرش, Garland Magazine, Dec 2024
‘All that would have been possible did she live that night: a retrospective on Khadija Saye.’ Arts of the Working Class: Sports & Disability, Winter Edition 2022
‘Imperfect Commodity, Imperfect Care: Interview with Nour Shantout’, Arts of the Working Class: Kindness & Destruction, Fall Edition 2022
Hazem and Lamisse State Library of NSW