Sultans and Crocodiles

At the end of 2014, English readers were introduced to Youssef Rakha, a strong and pressing voice from Egypt. A senior writer for Al-Ahram Weekly, Rakha has published a wide variety of articles and short stories in both Arabic and English. The two novels that have been recently translated in English are his first, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal: Strange Incidents from History in the City of Mars, and his second, the more recent The Crocodiles. Both have received considerable attention, and what is noteworthy about Rakha as a writer is his ability to call upon vastly different styles, tones, and narratives in these two very different books.

The Book of the Sultan’s Seal is, among many things, the narrative of a man’s unravelling. Recently separated from his wife, Mustafa Çorbaci moves back into his mother’s apartment and slowly begins to notice patterns and events that, rather than seem coincidental, are indicative to him of connections between this world and a more transcendent one. Everyday events such as his daily commute between his home and the office of the magazine he works at, near Tahrir Square, begin to take on mystical dimensions. As a result, he starts to make sense of the world by taking the names of familiar Cairo neighbourhoods and landmarks, transforming them into a kind of dream language that is one part his own making, but in another way reflective of the connections between the two worlds.

Original article by Seth Messinger

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Sultans and Crocodiles