The Dissenters by Youssef Rakha

Minneapolis. Graywolf Press. 2025. 272 pages.

In The Dissenters, the first of Youssef Rakha’s (b. 1976) novels written in English, the story begins with Nour, the narrator, submerged with visions of his mother’s life while secluded in the attic of his family home. These visions transport him to 1948, a pivotal year marked by the defeat of the Arab armies in Palestine and the declaration of the state of Israel—a historical moment that casts a long shadow over the novel. Born years after Egypt’s revolution, Nour grapples with the disillusionment of its aftermath, his ambivalence toward Palestine paralleled by a bold critique of Nasser’s legacy.

He projects these sentiments onto his mother, a figure who embodies the shifting identities of the nation as she moves through the novel under three names: Amna, Nimo, and Mouna—the last bestowed upon her during her courtship with Nour’s father. Nour’s narrative ties the state of Egypt to the female body, particularly his mother’s—echoing the nation’s epithet as the “mother of the world.”

This female-centered narrative is further underscored by Nour’s frenzied letters to his sister Shimo, who has left Egypt to pursue a PhD at Stanford University—a decision from which Mouna never fully recovers. In these letters, Nour’s reflections grow increasingly muddied with his conflicted perceptions of personal and national histories. He draws a startling comparison between the nationalization of the Suez Canal and his mother’s circumcision, which he describes as “two twigs digging into her in a marital bedroom-turned-pornopsychotropic cavern, the day the Suez Canal comes home to the fellahin.” By referencing both events with a mixture of sensuality and serious acts of violation, Rakha makes an apt observation about the inseparable nature of pleasure and pain attributed to female sexuality, one that mirrors his duplicitous relationship to home.

This fractured sense of identity is similarly portrayed in Nour’s father, Amin Abdalla, who provides a contrasting yet pivotal perspective on Egypt’s tumultuous history. Amin, a disgraced communist imprisoned for six years during his marriage to Mouna, endures unspeakable torments that haunt him throughout the novel, culminating in his lament at the book’s end. Unlike Nour and Mouna, whose sentiments toward the revolution are oftentimes ambiguous, Amin’s disillusionment is unyielding. His scathing critique of Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he describes as a “turd” and a “psychopath,” lays out his contempt for the leader’s rise to power. Amin sees Nasser as a man driven by vanity and ambition, deriding him as “the postman’s son” whose “little education” is elevated to scripture. Amin’s words not only foreshadow the conflicts and extreme religiosity that will paralyze the nation but also reveal an underlying elitism—perhaps reflective of the ideological divides and class tensions that lie at the heart of Egypt’s unrest. This class divide is further exemplified by Mouna’s observation of Sameh Khairy’s residence, which she compares to the royal study of Saraya Abdeen, “only a subtle difference, though. This wasn’t so much an actual palace study as a peasant’s idea of what a palace study looks like. A peasant who had ransacked palaces, it’s true. But a peasant, nonetheless.”

It is only when we are given a glimpse into the chilling phenomenon of the Holy Jumpers—a disturbing series of incidents in which women across the city mysteriously leap off the ledges of tall buildings—that the reader briefly levitates into the surreal. Mouna attributes these inexplicable acts to the Ikhwan, a religious and military brotherhood whose influence pervades Arab states. Her investigation into these tragic events becomes an obsession, drawing derision from the state and haunting her until her death. These deaths occur in conjunction with her sudden religiosity, which form a critical undercurrent in the novel, though the author approaches these themes with a secular outlook that sometimes reduces their complexity. Her devotion is framed as a manifestation of repressed sexuality, latent homoeroticism, and disillusionment with the revolution, rather than being explored on its own terms.

However, this perspective foreshadows the narrator’s broader disenchantment with religious extremism that has undoubtedly immobilized his country. These views are likely reflected in Mouna’s crippled state toward the end of her life, when she becomes a powerful metaphor for a nation broken by the weight of its unfulfilled promises and the corrosive impact of fanaticism.

Lethokuhle Msimang
Dartmouth College