Lebanon’s Wasta Has Contributed to the Country’s Collapse
Novelist Samir El-Youssef recalls adolescent challenges and more recent experience where wasta was a necessity.
Author: Samir El-Youssef
Samir El-Youssef is a British-Palestinian writer, born in Al-Rashidia, a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Lebanon, in 1964. He has lived in London since 1990, where he studied philosophy obtaining BA and MA degrees. In 2005 he won the Tocholusky Swedish-PEN Award for promoting the cause of peace and freedom of speech in the Middle East. He is the author of 11 books, among them Gaza Blues (co-authored with Israeli writer Etger Keret), The Illusion of Return, A Treaty of Love, The Poet Approaches (novella in Arabic, 2016), The Strangers’ Metaphors (prose poems in Arabic, 2018) and The Unknown Biography of the Absent Poet (long prose poem, 2021). For the last 30 years, he has contributed essays and book reviews to many Arabic and international publications.