The Crocodiles

Author:   Youssef Rakha ,  Robin Moger ,  Robin Moger
Publisher:   Seven Stories Press,U.S.
ISBN:  

9781609805715


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   09 December 2014
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

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The Crocodiles


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Overview

Set in Cairo between 1997 and 2011, The Crocodiles is narrated in numbered, prose poem-like paragraphs, set against the backdrop of a burning Tahrir Square, by a man looking back on the magical and explosive period of his life when he and two friends started a secret poetry club amid a time of drugs, messy love affairs, violent sex, clumsy but determined intellectual bravado, and retranslations of the Beat poets. Youssef Rakha's provocative, brutally intelligent novel of growth and change begins with a suicide and ends with a doomed revolution, forcefully capturing thirty years in the life of a living, breathing, daring, burning, and culturally incestuous Cairo.

Full Product Details

Author:   Youssef Rakha ,  Robin Moger ,  Robin Moger
Publisher:   Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Imprint:   Seven Stories Press,U.S.
Dimensions:   Width: 13.90cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 21.00cm
Weight:   0.252kg
ISBN:  

9781609805715


ISBN 10:   1609805712
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   09 December 2014
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

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Reviews

From its opening depiction of a suicide to its final pages, the author paints a disquieting picture of wild young people who can only look forward to a future that remains unresolved. -- Publishers Weekly Rakha writes with keen authenticity and imbues each scene in this kaleidoscopic, intelligent, and unconventional novel with unparalleled verisimilitude, essential reading for our turbulent times. -- Booklist What happened in Egypt around its second revolution was a mixture of grandeur and pettiness, of sorrow and mirth, of expectation and despair, of theory and flesh. All of which may be found in The Crocodiles, a novel where reality sheds its veil to reveal its true face -- that of a timeless mythology. --Amin Maalouf, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Samarkand Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles is a fierce 'post-despair' novel about a generation of poets who were too caught up in themselves to witness the 2011 revolution in Egypt. Or is it? With its numbered paragraphs and beautifully surreal imagery, The Crocodiles is also a long poem, an elegiac wail singing the sad music of a collapsing Egypt. Either way, The Crocodiles --suspicious of sincerity, yet sincere in its certainty that poetry accomplishes nothing--will leave you speechless with the hope that meaning may once again return to words. --Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Youssef Rakha has channeled Allen Ginsberg's ferocity and sexual abandon to bring a secret Cairo poetry society called The Crocodiles to life. He's done something daring and not unlike Bolano in his transforming the Egyptian revolution into a psychedelic fiction thick with romantic round robins, defiant theorizing and an unafraid reckoning with the darkest corners of the Egyptian mentality. --Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor


What happened in Egypt around its second revolution was a mixture of grandeur and pettiness, of sorrow and mirth, of expectation and despair, of theory and flesh. All of which may be found in The Crocodiles, a novel where reality sheds its veil to reveal its true face -- that of a timeless mythology. --Amin Maalouf, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Samarkand Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles is a fierce 'post-despair' novel about a generation of poets who were too caught up in themselves to witness the 2011 revolution in Egypt. Or is it? With its numbered paragraphs and beautifully surreal imagery, The Crocodiles is also a long poem, an elegiac wail singing the sad music of a collapsing Egypt. Either way, The Crocodiles --suspicious of sincerity, yet sincere in its certainty that poetry accomplishes nothing--will leave you speechless with the hope that meaning may once again return to words. --Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Youssef Rakha has channeled Allen Ginsberg's ferocity and sexual abandon to bring a secret Cairo poetry society called The Crocodiles to life. He's done something daring and not unlike Bolano in his transforming the Egyptian revolution into a psychedelic fiction thick with romantic round robins, defiant theorizing and an unafraid reckoning with the darkest corners of the Egyptian mentality. --Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor


What happened in Egypt around its second revolution was a mixture of grandeur and pettiness, of sorrow and mirth, of expectation and despair, of theory and flesh. All of which may be found in The Crocodiles , a novel where reality sheds its veil to reveal its true face -- that of a timeless mythology. --Amin Maalouf, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Samarkand Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles is a fierce 'post-despair' novel about a generation of poets who were too caught up in themselves to witness the 2011 revolution in Egypt. Or is it? With its numbered paragraphs and beautifully surreal imagery, The Crocodiles is also a long poem, an elegiac wail singing the sad music of a collapsing Egypt. Either way, The Crocodiles --suspicious of sincerity, yet sincere in its certainty that poetry accomplishes nothing--will leave you speechless with the hope that meaning may once again return to words. --Moustafa Bayoumi, author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Youssef Rakha has channeled Allen Ginsberg's ferocity and sexual abandon to bring a secret Cairo poetry society called The Crocodiles to life. He's done something daring and not unlike Bolano in his transforming the Egyptian revolution into a psychedelic fiction thick with romantic round robins, defiant theorizing and an unafraid reckoning with the darkest corners of the Egyptian mentality. --Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor


Author Information

"Novelist, reporter, poet and photographer Youssef Rakha was a reporter, copy editor, and cultural editor-cum-literary critic at Al-Ahram Weekly, the Cairo-based English-language newspaper, and the founding features writer at the Abu Dhabi-based daily, the National. His work has appeared in English in the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, Parnassus Aeon Magazine, McSweeney's, and the Kenyon Review, among others. His photographs have been exhibited at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. Seven books by Rakha have appeared in Arabic. He was chosen among the 39 writers representing the new voices of modern Arabic literature at the Hay Festival/Beirut World Book Capital competition, Beirut39 in 2009. His essay, ""In Extremis- Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cairo (An Oriental Essay in Seven Parts)"" appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of The Kenyon Review."

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