Interview with Youssef Rakha

I don’t think I can do Youssef Rakha’s The Dissenters, justice in a brief intro. The deeply moving novel is about a now deceased Egyptian woman who had shifting identities throughout her life, even different names. Her life story is told by her grieving son through what could be described as ‘psychedelic visions’—or maybe it’s apt to say he becomes her in this recounting. The narrative shifts between these visions and his letters to his estranged sister in America.

The breadth of the novel is astonishing, spanning over fifty years of Egypt’s political history. Amid the backdrop of political despair, this fascinating woman changes over time; from her being in a forced marriage, becoming a divorcée, a mother wearing hijab, and a feminist activist during the Arab Spring. The Dissenters is a complex portrait of a woman and her shifting roles during political transformation, dealing with power, love, sex, and death. It’s less than 300 pages but reads like a sweeping epic twice that size. And at a time when many countries seem to be at the precipice of political transformation, this novel feels especially pertinent, even necessary.

Youssef Rakha is the author of three previous novels, including Paulo, which was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and won the Sawiris Award. His work has been widely translated and anthologized and has been published by The Atlantic, Ploughshares, The New York Times, and elsewhere. The Dissenters, which came out earlier this year with Graywolf Press, is his first novel written in English. 

I’m so happy Youssef agreed to this interview!

photo credit: Bassam El Zoghby

You’ve written several novels, but this is the first you wrote in English. Can you talk about any differences in both the writing and publication process from your other novels?

In the end the process of structuring and drafting the book wasn’t as different as I’d thought it might be. I wasn’t writing into a specific context or literary idiom, so I ended up automatically reverting to what I knew. At the level of the sentence there were different considerations, of course: how to convey spoken Arabic in English (as opposed to how to balance spoken and written Arabic, which are distinct); English alliteration vs Arabic assonance; or cultural references that might be obscure to an English speaker. Publication was a lot more difficult but also a lot more rewarding. I’d say the most significant difference was having the benefit of an editor, a kind of committed test reader whose job is to point out potential issues and make structural suggestions. This role doesn’t really exist in Arab publishing. It didn’t feel like reduced autonomy, as I might’ve expected it to. It was more work for me, but it gave the book time to evolve and a shared space in which to do it for the benefit of a relatively concrete, known readership and that was truly rewarding.

I admire fiction that takes risks with the narrative, which The Dissenters does with Amna/ Nimo/ Mouna’s story being delivered through her son’s visions and letters. I’m curious how you developed the conceit of the novel—was it through trial and error, or did you have the idea before you began writing?

At a relatively early point I knew it was this woman’s story and I wanted a device to tell it without recourse to an omniscient narrator and without having her recount her own life. That was a technical consideration, but at a deeper level there were also things I felt she didn’t know, didn’t remember, or didn’t have the distance to make sense of. I also didn’t feel I could just adopt a Francophone woman’s voice as opposed to the voice of someone more like me, so the device of the visions solved all kinds of problems while also feeding into this idea of how in writing one person can literally become another. The letters weren’t necessarily letters to start with but the narrative was always addressed to the sister, with whom the narrator had always spoken English and who now lived in America. So it easily lent itself to the epistolary format.

Can you share some reading recommendations?

Let’s see. If people don’t know about Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali—that, to my knowledge, is the first successful Egyptian novel written in English—that is a book they should definitely check out. It’s one of my core influences and a kind of precursor to The Dissenters, since it deals with Egypt’s first revolution of 1952 the way The Dissenters deals with Egypt’s second of 2011. But it’s also funny, tragic, and beautifully multilayered; political in the best sense. It’s as gorgeous a way into modern Egypt as any. A more recent recommendation is Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and then It’s Over. It’s a zombie novel from the point of view of a zombie, but it’s also a lament for our world. A truly incredible piece of writing where every statement operates simultaneously at the level of narrative and of profound, ambiguous, metaphorical significance, it is an utterly captivating piece of true art.

Is there a song that ties into this novel in some way?

The Egyptian band Masar Egbari’s 2020 cover of this 1923 song by Sayed Darwish, perhaps the greatest Egyptian composer of all time. It’s an indispensable aspect of Egypt’s emotional soundscape, had been performed by countless artists in the last century, and captures something very intimate I think. It recurs in Amna’s life, and punctuates many pivotal moments. I feel this rock version is the closest to the spirit of the twenty-teens, though, and among the most musically legible in English:

Thank you, Youssef!