Youssef Rakha is an Egyptian novelist, poet, and essayist who writes in both Arabic and English and thinks about Egypt, Arabs, and Islam. His first novel to be written in English, The Dissenters, is an account of the last seventy years of Egyptian history through the life and death of a woman born in 1939 who is roused from her spiritual lethargy by the 2011 revolution in Tahrir Square. It is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in February of 2025. Youssef lives with his family in Cairo.