Magdi Youssef is a native of Cairo (Egypt). Since 1965, he has taught at various universities in Europe and the Arab world. He specializes in the comparative study of literature and socio-cultures. He is a founder and the president of the International Association of Intercultural Studies (IAIS), an association that counted the late Pierre Bourdieu and the late Darcy Ribeiro among its officers.
Magdi Youssef has published works in six European languages, apart from Arabic, and he is also a renowned translator of Arab and German poetry and prose as well as a contributor to publications as diverse as Al-Hilal, Al Ahram, the International Journal of Middle East Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press) and Theatre Research International (Oxford Univ. Press). He was a member of the jury of the Carthago International Theatre Festival in 1995, and has joined both the Egyptian and the German Writers Unions, as well as numerous scholarly associations, such as the Association pour l'avancement des Études Islamiques, Collège de France (Paris), the International Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures, the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), the International Sociological Association (ISA), the International Brecht Society (IBS; based in the US), the Egyptian Philosophical Association, etc. As a well-known and respected art critic, he is a member of the Egyptian Association of Plastic Arts Critics.
He is also an adviser to the editorial board of various renowned publications, including the monthly literary and cultural review, Sotour (Cairo - London), and the Yearbook of Comparative Literature (Cairo University).
Magdi Youssef is listed in the Egyptian Who is Who,
the Who is Who in the Middle East, and the International Who
is Who in Asian Studies (H.K.), etc.
Among Magdi Youssef's recent publications are:
Towards A Real Democratisation
of the Literary Canon: The Euro-Arab Context as A Paradigm (forthcoming)
The drawing
is by the author's daughter, Hannan.
Refutations: Controversies
with A Number of Leading Arab Thinkers. [A Critique of Main Streams of
Arab Thought Today],
Cairo (General State Publishing
House) 2002
181pp.
From Socio-Cultural Interference
to Cross-Cultural Interaction, Cairo (Kitab al-Hilal Book Series) 2001
394 pp.
[The GOOGLE search engine will
lead you to a book review]
The Myth of European Literature,
Aachen and Rotterdam (Symposium Press) 1998
Socio-Cultural Interference
and Intellectual Independence,
Cairo (The General State
Book Orgamization) 1993
199pp.