Yussef El Guindi

Yussef El Guindi ( ; born 1960) is an Egyptian-American playwright. He writes full-length, one-act, and adapted plays on Arab-Muslim experience in the United States. He is best known for his 2005 play Back of the Throat and has been called "the most talented Arab American writer of political plays."

Background

Yussef El Guindi was born in 1960 in Egypt. His grandfather was director Zaki Toleimat, grandmother actress Rose al Yusuf, and his uncle writer Ihsan Abdel Koudous. At the age of three, he moved to London and received schooling in the UK and France. In 1982, he received a BA degree from the American University in Cairo. In 1983, he moved to the United States and received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. He then moved to Seattle, Washington, where in 1996 he became a US citizen. In 2018, he also became a Core Company playwright member of ACT Theatre (Seattle). 2005: Best New Play of 2005 by the Seattle Times for Back of the Throat

Works

"Guindi's works focus on themes of the immigrant experience, cultural and political climates, and current issues facing Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans." In analyzing his work, Anneka Esch-Van Kan wrote: Language in El Guindi’s plays is the basis of any construction of reality. While language as a general capacity to speak and as a system of signs is the basis of all distinctions, the differences between several languages play an important role as well. The language one speaks determines one’s perspective on the world, and the translation of meaning from one language into another never works out with complete clarity. Back of the Throat (2006) Jihad Jones and the Kalashnikov Babes (2014) Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World (2014) Threesome (2016) Collaborator (2017) Hostages (2018) Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith (2018) The Talented Ones (2018) The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi (2019)

Translations Ebtessam El Shokrofy translated Yussef El Guindi's Back of Throat into Arabic. It is published by State Publishing House in 2018. In addition, Abanoub Wagdy produced the translation of El Guindi's Ten Acrobats into Arabic. The translation was published by Anglo Egyptian Bookshop in 2022. Thus, El Guindi's works have hitherto had only two Arabic translations.

Miscellaneous Actor-director Orson Welles, director Howard Hawks, and writer William Faulkner visited El Guindi's family home.