Youssef Rakha

Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian novelist, poet and journalist who writes in Arabic and English. He graduated from the UK in 1998. His book Beirut Shi Mahal was nominated for a literary award in 2006. He was selected as one of the best Arabic writers under 40 at the Beirut 39 event in 2010. His first novel, Kitab al-Thugha, won the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation award for Paul Starkey's translation in 2015. His latest novel, Paolo, was nominated for the long list of the Arabic Booker Prize and won the Sawiris Cultural Award for Best Fiction in the Top Writers Branch in 2017.