Khaled Al Youssef The Arab World s Foremost Servant of the Short Story

Yemenat

Mohammed Al Mekhlafi

I recently read an article by the Saudi writer and novelist Khaled Al Youssef, titled Fifty Years… O, Short Story! He posted it on his Facebook page a few days ago, and it was later republished by several local and Arab websites.

What emerged from the article was a remarkable literary journey, not simply because Al Youssef is a short story writer, novelist, and critic, but also because he has spent more than five decades following and documenting Saudi Arabia’s literary and cultural life.

What caught my attention most, however, was his long relationship with the short story. From the very beginning of his career, he remained deeply interested in the genre and in those who wrote it. He documented their work, helped publish it, and sought to introduce it to readers both inside and outside Saudi Arabia.

Al Youssef did not simply write short stories and leave them to their readers. Over the years, his engagement with the genre grew into something much broader. He began as a short story writer, then became increasingly involved in tracing its development, documenting its history, publishing works related to it, and taking part in activities and forums devoted to it. Through this sustained engagement, he has come to occupy a distinctive place in the history of the Saudi short story, particularly in following its writers and preserving their work.

When he wrote The Illusion of Rain in late 1977, at the age of nineteen, he did not know, as he says, that the story would call forth others like it or mark the beginning of such a long and branching journey. He probably could not have imagined then that his relationship with the short story would continue for so many years, or that it would grow from simply