Youssef Rakha, was born in Cairo in 1976, he earned a BA in English and
philosophy from Hull University, England. From 1998 to the present, he
has worked as reporter, copy editor and cultural editor at Al-Ahram
Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper. He was on
sabbatical for a year (2008-2009) to work as a features writer at the
Abu Dhabi-based daily, The National. His reportage, travel
writing, fiction and poetry – written originally in either Arabic or
English – as well as his photography have appeared in numerous
publications in Cairo, Beirut, London, Berlin, Italy and the US, as well
as on the World Wide Web. He exhibited photos at the Goethe Institute,
Cairo, and has published six books in Arabic: a collection of short
stories, Azhar Ash 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), two books of travel writing with the
Beirut-based Dar Riyad El Rayyes: Bourguiba ala Madad (Bourguiba
Reluctantly,) 2008 and Shamal al Qahira gharb al Filippin (North
of Cairo, West of the Philippines), 2009, as well as a collection of
poems and essays, Kullu Amakinina (All Our Places), 2010
with the Cairo-based Dar Al Ain. Kitab At Tughra (Book of the
Sultan’s Seal), a novel that is also an imaginative evocation of
post-2001 Cairo and a meditation on the decline of Muslim civilisation
that draws on Ottoman history and the work of the great Cairene
historians Ibn Iyas and Al Jabarti, appeared in Cairo with Dar Al
Shorouk in February 2011
CONTENTS
THE REVOLUTION FOR
REAL: CAIRO, 2011
BEIRUT
SHI MAHAL
THE BODY CANNOT
LIVE WITHOUT THE MIND
Five
Cases Of Exorcism
The Body Cannot
Live Without The Mind
Three Versions of Copt
The
Nude and the Martyr
The Menace of Resistance
No Renaissance for
Old Men
Watermelon
Republic
Open Letter to Dr.
Mohamed El Baradei
Lost in
Affirmation
Post
Mortem
