Youssef Rakha

Born in Cairo in 1976, I earned a BA in English and philosophy from Hull University, England. From 1998 to the present, I have worked as reporter, copy editor and cultural editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper. I was on sabbatical for a year (2008-2009) to work as a features writer at the Abu Dhabi-based daily, The National. My reportage, travel writing, photography, fiction and poetry – written originally in either Arabic or English – have appeared in numerous publications in Cairo, Beirut, London, Berlin, Italy and the US, as well as on the World Wide Web. I exhibited my photos at the Goethe Institute, Cairo, and have so far published four books in Arabic: a collection of short stories, Azhar Al-Shams (Flowers of the Sun, 1999, Dar Sharqiyat), a photo travelogue, Beirut shi mahal (Beirut, Some Place, 2006, Kitab Amkenah – nominated for the Lettre Ulysses Literary Reportage Award), and  two books of travel writing with the Beirut-based Dar Riyad El Rayyes. I am currently in the process of completing my first novel, Kitab At Tughra (Book of the Tugra), an imaginative evocation of post-2001 Cairo and a meditation on the decline of Muslim civilisation, which draws on Ottoman history and the work of the great Cairene historians Ibn Iyas and Al Jabarti.