A Review, a Gallery, and an Expletive

This is a disturbing book about torture, longing … and what happens when aliens are quietly manipulating your life

Thus Sarah Manvel in a new review of Emissaries, courtesy of The Discerning Mollusk's Guide to Arts & Ideas. She goes on:

The mood of pain, upset and derangement comes through very strongly but one of the short stories in Emissaries is an unusually graphic depiction of child abuse, which means it takes a strong stomach to be able to read this book all the way through. The rape fantasies are a beach holiday in comparison, and I am not joking. That said, it’s important to emphasise that author Youssef Rakha (full disclosure: one of these stories was first published on a website I also have written for, meaning we certainly have mutual friends) is not interested in making his depictions of pain or violent fantasy pornographic, and it’s a testament to his skill he threads this exceedingly tricky needle exactly right. I’m not sure how I feel about all of that but more here!

Apropos of my birthday on the 12th (don’t you dare ask how old!), I’ve made a small selection of my “travel photography”, whatever that means, which includes some of my favorite photos of mine (from Damascus, Marrakesh, Leurkerbad, Qusair, Istanbul, Cairo, Alexandria, Siwa and Fez, respectively):

The good people at Hoax have also revived this piece of digital art that I made back in 2011. I will not include the actual image here, lest any of my Arabic-speaking friends find it offensive (most of my Arabic-speaking friends won’t find it offensive!) But it’s over at that unique “ongoing curatorial project dedicated to giving an online, print and IRL platform to work that exists at the intersection of art and creative writing”, so maybe take a look and check out all the other amazing work that is there.

Finally, I signed a contract with the Milan-based Almutawassit who will be publishing my new Arabic novella – the title translates to You Are Going to the Bar, or Happiness – between this year and the next. There is an extract (in Arabic) here. This is the last and shortest part of the Crocodiles trilogy, concluded exactly ten years after the first and longest, The Crocodiles. I therefore leave you with this image of the great comedian Ismail Yassine (1912-1972), which (I’m not going to tell you how) is absolutely crucial to the new book: