ONLY $9.90 DELIVERY INFO
"Novelist, poet, reporter, photographer, the multitalentedYOUSSEF RAKHAwas born in Cairo in 1976. He received a BA in English and Philosophy from Hull University in England and since then has worked as a writer, copy editor and cultural editor-cum-literary critic atAl-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper. He was also the founding features writer at the Abu Dhabi-based daily theNational. His work has appeared in English in theDaily Telegraph, theNew York Times,Parnassus,Aeon Magazine,McSweeney'sand the Kenyon Review, among others. His photographs have been exhibited at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. He is the author of seven books in Arabic, some of which have appeared in German, Polish, Slovak and Italian. Rakha was chosen as one of the best known and loved new voices of modern Arabic literature at the Hay Festival/Beirut World Book Capital competition, Beirut39, in 2009. His essay ""In Extremis- Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cairo (An Oriental Essay in Seven Parts)"" appeared in the Summer 2012 issue oftheKenyon Review.The CrocodilesandBook of the Sultan's Sealare Rakha's first novels to appear in English."
From its opening depiction of a suicide to its final pages, the author paints a disquieting picture of wild young people who can only look forward to a future that remains unresolved. -- Publishers Weekly Rakha writes with keen authenticity and imbues each scene in this kaleidoscopic, intelligent, and unconventional novel with unparalleled verisimilitude, essential reading for our turbulent times. -- Booklist What happened in Egypt around its second revolution was a mixture of grandeur and pettiness, of sorrow and mirth, of expectation and despair, of theory and flesh. All of which may be found in The Crocodiles, a novel where reality sheds its veil to reveal its true face -- that of a timeless mythology. --Amin Maalouf, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Samarkand Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles is a fierce 'post-despair' novel about a generation of poets who were too caught up in themselves to witness the 2011 revolution in Egypt. Or is it? With its numbered paragraphs and beautifully surreal imagery, The Crocodiles is also a long poem, an elegiac wail singing the sad music of a collapsing Egypt. Either way, The Crocodiles --suspicious of sincerity, yet sincere in its certainty that poetry accomplishes nothing--will leave you speechless with the hope that meaning may once again return to words. --Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Youssef Rakha has channeled Allen Ginsberg's ferocity and sexual abandon to bring a secret Cairo poetry society called The Crocodiles to life. He's done something daring and not unlike Bolano in his transforming the Egyptian revolution into a psychedelic fiction thick with romantic round robins, defiant theorizing and an unafraid reckoning with the darkest corners of the Egyptian mentality. --Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor
