“THE DISSENTERS is the book of witnessing par excellence, telling not the story of just one woman or one Egypt, but rather of all of us who are of these geographies.”
Youssef Rakha is the rare writer who is actually paying attention and trying to make sense of the world while many are devolving into despair. In THE DISSENTERS, revolutions and their aftermath play the chord of unsung protagonists of History—not of the ones creating and disseminating grandiose lies and killing for them, but the ones willing to create a world outside the tinted windows of power, even if that means challenging the abyss.
“THE DISSENTERS is a stylish, deftly-told story about a stubbornly cosmopolitan and non-conformist set of characters whose lives set them on a collision course with Egypt's military regime leading up to the Tahrir uprising and its grim aftermath.”
“Here is Egypt, Cairo, ‘Mother of the World,’ viewed through the chameleon lives of one Cairene mother, ‘a fractal of our country.’ With thrilling prose and a narrative that flows as relentless as the Nile, Youssef Rakha takes us on the big dipper of Egyptian history from Nasser to now. THE DISSENTERS is by turns haunted, horrifying, and hilarious. At heart, though, it’s an elegy for lost revolutions, generations . . . but never really lost, not in that land of revenants. You'll end up knowing more about the real, perhaps hyper-real, Egypt than you will from many a history. Knowing, too, that love's more real still: more real than time.”
