Navigating Boundaries: Post-Muslim Identities in Literature | Youssef Rakha
Youssef Rakha talked about his writing on post-Muslim perspectives in Arabic and Egyptian literature.
Youssef Rakha is a novelist, poet, essayist and journalist who writes in both Arabic and English. His interests include Arab porn and the possibility of a post-Muslim perspective. His first two novels The Book of the Sultan’s Seal and The Crocodiles appeared in English in early 2015. Frequently anthologized and translated into many languages, he has written widely on Arabic literature and Egyptian history. Youssef’s 2006 photo travelogue Beirut Shi Mahal was nominated for the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage. He was among the 39 best Arab writers under 40 selected for the Hay Festival Beirut39 Festival in 2010. His first novel, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal, won the 2015 Banipal Seif Ghobash Prize for Paul Starkey’s translation, and his third, Paulo, was on the long list of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2017 and won the 2017 Sawiris Award.
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