Youssef Rakha is an award-winning author of both novels and poetry, as well as a journalist and a photographer. I 2009, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Arabic writers under 40. He is known for The Crocodiles-trilogy, following a group of poets before, during and after the 2011 revolution. The Dissenters is his first novel written in English.

The story is told by Nour. When his mother dies, he starts cleaning out her things in the attic, and soon discovers a far more complex portrait of the woman he thought he knw. From her forced marriage to a far older man in the 50s – whom she left, via a liberated French student and a pious, religious mother to a radical activist during the 2011 revolution.

His mother’s many faces mirror the changing history of Egypt, as well as the limitations and possibilities for women through that turbulent time.

At the House of Literature, Rakha is joined by Teresa Pepe, Professor of Arabic literature at the University of Oslo, for a conversation about Egyptian history, revolutions, mothers and sons.

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