Youssef Rakha is a novelist, poet, essayist and journalist who writes in both Arabic and English. His first two novels The Book of the Sultan’s Seal and The Crocodiles appeared in English in early 2015. He has worked as a cultural journalist, literary translator, and creative writing coach since then. He founded and edits The Sυltan’ѕ Seal: Cairo's Coolest Cosmopolitan Hotel, a bilingual online space. Youssef’s writing is featured in many web and print publications including The Atlantic, BOMB, Guernica, The Kenyon Review, and The New York Times. Frequently anthologized and translated into many languages, he has written widely on Arabic literature and Egyptian history, and his books have appeared in French, German and Polish as well as English and Arabic.