On the Egyptian publishing map, Al-Kotob Khan Press stands out as remarkable. Founded on 5 May 2006, by Karam Youssef, it started out as a bookshop-based cultural hub, and has continued to enact its vision not only for promoting books and the love of reading but also building the space where that passion can thrive. Not being a Maadi native, the GPS did not prevent me from taking a few unnecessary detours on the way to Al-Kotob Khan’s new venue to find the whole place on tiptoe, littered with cartons, readying for the book fair.
“The idea of Al-Kotob Khan did not just pop up overnight,” Youssef told me. “It followed years of contemplation. After graduating from the Faculty of Mass Communication at Cairo University and working in corporate settings, I knew I would eventually leave to pursue something I truly loved — something related to art, books, or culture. I initially considered opening a gallery or a second-hand bookstore. But during my time in the corporate world, I also noticed there were no simple, inviting bookstores in Maadi. I longed for a space where I could enjoy a cup of coffee while reading, something similar to the libraries I visited frequently in Downtown, like the American University in Cairo and Goethe, Madbouly, Lehnert and Landrock or L’Orientaliste.”
After much deliberation, Youssef decided to create a venue that would be not just a bookstore, but a cultural centre. “I envisioned a space where people could sit, read, watch films, engage in book discussions, and meet authors. I wanted Al-Kotob Khan to be a complete cultural hub and my previous work was useful as it was in the field of project management and my vision was for my bookstore to gather books that are not available anywhere else, rare books and books in different languages,” she explains.
Youssef’s husband and future partner in Al-Kotob Khan, the filmmaker Ahmed Abu-Zeid, joined her in making her dream come true. “When we began, I faced significant challenges, particularly in importing foreign books. I owe much to Mark Linz,” the former director of the AUC Press, “whose support was invaluable during those early days. It wasn’t easy at all,” she recalls. “I had to target each publishing house individually to source Arabic books, as there was no comprehensive database available.”
Eventually, the idea of starting her own publishing house took hold. “We organised creative writing workshops – that really set us apart – with the novelist Yasser Abdel-Latif and others, and the workshops were designed to discover and nurture emerging talents. We published works by authors like Mohamed Rabie, Saleh Hamed, and Eman Abdel-Rehim, whose new book is appearing with Al-Kotob Khan this year under the title Maqtouaat Ala Al-Hob wal Khawf (Variations on Love and Fear). Our first published book was a collection of prose by eight writers including Ibrahim Al-Sayed, Amira Abu-Taleb, Samar Ahmed and Khaled Rabie. And then we started the novel writing workshop and more writers emerged through that...
“All of a sudden, I noticed a growing interest from established authors in publishing with Al-Kotob Khan. Along parallel lines I also focused on translation, which I did even more in the last five to six years. I’ve dedicated a lot of effort to translations of books on Egypt’s modern history, especially the cultural side of it, like Raphael Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring 20s, translated by Alaaeldin Mahmoud. For the book fair this year, we have André Aciman’s Out of Egypt translated by Ahmed Shafei and Lucie Ryzova’s The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt translated by Mohamed Al-Dakhakhny... I feel this is really important. I need to continue doing it. I even obtained the copyright to more titles.”
The book fair’s Egyptian releases, on the other hand, include the latest by two of Al-Kotob Khan’s regulars: Samaa Akrab (Near Skies) by Mohamed Kheir and Fi Nehayet Al-Zaman (At the End of Time) by Adel Esmat. Both Kheir and Esmat are award-winning, serious writers, and they have established themselves at the same time as their publisher.
“After 2011,” Youssef recalls, “I dedicated a lot of my attention to publishing. I believed it needed my dedication and discipline. Al-Kotob Khan is a small project, personally funded. We don’t take money from writers,” as some other publishers do, “so I used to depend on the sale of foreign books to the expatriate community in Maadi. This offered a high profit margin, enabling me to fund other things like publishing, because the profit margin from Arabic book sales is so low you’d need to sell thousands of copies to make any profit at all.”
Reflecting on the challenges faced since 2011, Youssef explains, “Al-Kotob Khan transitioned from being a bookstore to a publishing house due to legal changes and difficulties in importing books. The rising costs from currency fluctuations made it impossible to continue importing as before. If I were to sell an imported art book, for example, it would cost me LE4000-5000 a copy before customs and tax, and that would just be impossible.” That is why she has instituted a second-hand section: “We receive books from friends of Al-Kotob Khan and even personal friends who want to give up piles of books they no longer need and we sell them at very low prices.”
But inflation has affected publishing too: “Due to the increase in the price of paper I had to resort to paper options other than the ones I had used. Three years ago the ton of paper cost LE17,000, now it costs nearly LE70,000. This, in addition to the effects of Covid, forced some changes besides the kind of paper used: we now also print fewer copies and we do it in two stages. Even the smallest things are very pricy now: the cover, transport, translation, copyright, the cost of translation. It’s all very much more expensive.
“At the end of the day, Al-Kotob Khan is a press operated by two people: my husband, me, as well as the input of Yasser Abdel-Latif as an editor. Sometimes the work is done by freelancers, but if we had a bigger staff we could not sell books at the prices we do. But it works, and I’ve seen examples of similar small presses all around the world.
“We are not a giant establishment and we are not mainstream, nor commercial,” Youssef explains, summarising her vision, “but we have our niche and our contribution is crucial to some readers. We publish 20 or 25 books annually and I fund this myself, so I don’t have the luxury to publish a book I don’t believe is good. It would be a waste of time and money. I believe a publisher should feel responsible and committed to their choices. I believe a publisher’s vision is no less important than the writer’s. Al-Kotob Khan is interested in publishing experimental writing, and we try to have a range of creative genres beyond short stories and novels. We even started a series of such hybrid and genre-less books named Bela Defaf (Without Borders), edited by Yasser Abdel-Latif. The problem right now is that we really need readers. I believe the books I publish require a selective reader too.”
One example of an Al-Kotob Khan book I personally appreciated, which I doubt mainstream publishers would take on, was Akthar Al-Regal Dahala (The Shallowest Man), a selection of Woody Allen’s short stories and stand-up routines selected and translated by the film critic Essam Zakaria. “He is a dear and very old friend of mine and my husband’s,” Youssef says, “and I love Woody Allen’s work. So when Zakaria told me he had this manuscript I was instantly excited. We spent a lot of time obtaining the copyrights required for this book, more than a year and a half. We have new translations for this book fair, yes,” Youssef goes on, “including the book Non-required Reading (1973) by the Polish poet and essayist Wisława Szymborska, translated by Iman Mersal, and we also previously published translation for novelist Truman Capote by Yasser Abdel-Latif and Mohamed Hani.”
Regarding the economic challenges and declining purchasing power, Youssef says: “It is devastating to think of people coming in and buying several books the way they used to ten years ago, that just doesn’t happen anymore. At the book fair people used to come and buy seven or eight books in one go, now it’s one or two maximum. In Egypt we still have illiteracy, of course, and technology has had a negative impact on reading books. People want to read snippets on their devices and have no patience for anything longer than a page.
“Many publishers share the same feelings. I believe that’s why many of them resorted to participating in Arab book fairs but these also charge very high fees and that is in addition to the travelling and transport expenses. The last time I took part in one of those fairs it was a huge financial loss. I decided I wouldn’t be going back and that I would send selected books to an agent to make them available instead.”
And yet Youssef remains optimistic. “Books,” she says, giving instructions regarding the boxes going to the fairs, “are not a trend; they endure.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 30 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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