Youssef Rakha

Youssef Rakha
Born	12 June 1976
Language	English, Arabic
Alma mater	University of Hull (BA)
Subject	Cairo; Islam; the Arab Spring
Notable works	The Book of the Sultan's Seal, The Crocodiles
Years active	1999–present
Spouse	Heba El Nahhas (2011–present)
Children	Kismet, Murad, Zakariya
Website
yrakha.com

Youssef Rakha (Arabic: يوسف رخا; born on 12 June 1976 in Cairo, Egypt) is an Egyptian writer. Focusing on the city of Cairo, he has worked in many genres in both Arabic and English, developing a reputation as an essayist and poet as well as a novelist.

News outlets that have covered Rakha's work in English include Reuters,Qantara.de,AL-BAB, and The National. English language reviews of Rakha's books and interviews occasioned by his work have appeared in, among other outlets, Publishers Weekly,Words Without Borders,Reorient and Music and Literature.

Rakha is a well-known literary figure in Cairo and Beirut. His work has received regular in-depth coverage in the press since 2006. Arabic newspapers and media outlets that covered Youssef Rakha include Al-Ahram,Akhbar Al-Adab,Al-Akhbar,As-Safir,Al-Quds Al-Arabi,Al-ArabyAl-Mustaqbal,Al-Hayat,An-Nahar, raseef22.com and 24.UE.

The only child of a formerly Marxist lawyer, Elsaid Rakha, and an English-to-Arabic translator, Labiba Saad, Rakha was born and grew up in Dokki, on the western bank of the Nile, where he lives with his family today. At the age of 17 he left Egypt for the UK, where he obtained a first class honours BA in English and Philosophy from Hull University in 1998. On his return he joined the staff of Al-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper, where he has worked regularly since 1999.

For Rakha's biography, see the introduction to Beirut39: New Writing from the Arab World edited by Samuel Shimon, Starkey's chapter in Studying Modern Arabic Literature (footnote 4), Banipal online and the biographical note on Pro Helvetia's Territory Crossings.

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