Youssef Rakha

2 weeks ago | themarkaz.org | Youssef Rakha

The Egyptian author of an epistolary novel — his first in English — meditates on whether his work will join the canon of world literature. Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement last month, called a “powerful, shimmering and clever novel,” The Dissenters is already on its way to winning over western readers.

2 months ago | thedial.world | Youssef Rakha

⁂Later, four years after the revolution when it is over and I am ready to move along, I recall that it was Mouna who drew my attention to the Jumpers. At first it was professional interest that drove me: a reporter on the trail of a scoop. But it soon felt like something much bigger, much more personal than journalism could ever be:Women of all ages and circumstances stepping over windowsills and leaping across balustrades, unaccountably killing themselves in the thick of protests and lies.

Jan 20, 2025 | bidoun.org | Youssef Rakha |Zain Khalid

On July 19, 1962, an Egyptian passenger plane traveling from Hong Kong to Cairo via Bangkok crashed into the Sankamphaeng Mountains in Thailand. All twenty-six people on board United Arab Airlines Flight 869 died, including eight crew members. At Sawt El Umma, The Voice of the Nation, the task of reporting the incident fell to Nimo, the mysterious young belle who had arrived at the radio ministry a little over a year earlier, and who — some insinuated — was having an affair with the boss.

May 2, 2024 | themarkaz.org | Youssef Rakha

In a way that no Arab poet ever thought of doing before the Nineties, Sargon embodies the poet as uncommitted wanderer — and, all through his life, he willingly pays the price in homelessness and uncertainty, in refugee-ness. He frees the text of its historical onus, pushes it back into the broadest possible human context. To my friend and me he speaks of voluntary displacement and purposeful disengagement. Geographic flux.

Feb 16, 2024 | joylandmagazine.com | Youssef Rakha

SIDE ACreep, Radiohead (1993)Losing My Religion, R.E.M. (1991)Wind of Change, Scorpions (1990) Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Guns N’ Roses (1990)7 Seconds, Youssou N’Dour & Neneh Cherry (1994)SIDE BWhat’s Up, 4 Non Blondes (1993)The Man Who Sold the World, Nirvana (1993)For Whom the Bell Tolls, Saxon (1988)Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve (1997)Wonderwall, Oasis (1995)(1)It was the winter that lightning struck. Five hundred dead by heavenly assault.