See also 1952 Revolution in Egypt
- ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī (1957-, Egypt) – ʿImārat Yaʿqūbiyān (2002, English trans. The Yacoubian Building, 2004). Set in Cairo, this novel connects different characters and parallel stories to a building known as the Yacoubian Building. The novel starts in the interwar period and continues through the political changes following Nasser’s 1952 revolution (see 1952: Revolution in Egypt), after the façade of the building deteriorates and poor unemployed workers replace the rich elite living in it. The novel offers a snapshot of the explosive social situation in Egypt prior to the revolution in the spring of 2011. In 2006 it was made into a movie (also in L: LGBTQ: Male Homosexuality and C: Cities: Egypt: Cairo).
- Nuʿamān ʿĀshūr’s (1918 – 1987, Egypt) play ʿĀliat al-Dughrī (1962, English trans. The house of Al-Dughry, 1998). Combining social criticism with an element of popular culture, this play expresses the writer’s disappointment with post-revolutionary Egypt (reference). It portrays an Egyptian lower-middle-class family in a way that was unprecedented before the play in its subject-matter and character portrayal (reference). Its family members include Sayyid, the eldest son, who was driven out of his tailoring business, his younger brother Muṣṭafā, who obtained a master’s degree and got married, Zaynab, their sharp-tongued sister, ʿĀʾishah, a 26-year old teacher of gymnastics in need of a husband, and Ḥasan, the youngest brother, who rather spends his time playing football, which he has a talent for, than continue his education. Criticism on the family is made through the servant who unmasks their selfishness (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: Class and Social Change).
- Muḥammad al-Busāṭī (1962 – 2012, Egypt) – Jūʿa (2007, English trans. Hunger, 2008). This novel is a day-to-day account of those at the bottom of the Egyptian society who continuously suffer from hunger. It centers the family of Zaghlūl, whose father struggles to hold on to a steady job in Egypt following the 1952 military revolution and Nasser’s rule (reference). The novel describes how experiencing hunger affects human relations, namely that it leads to the collapse of values and to opportunism (reference)(also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: The Marginalized).
- Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s (1898 – 1987, Egypt) play Al-Aydī al-Nāʿimah (‘Soft Hands’, 1954) and Maṣīr Sursār (1966, English trans. The Fate of the Cockroach, 1973).
The ‘soft hands’ in Al-Aydī al-Nāʿimah refer to those of a prince of the former royal family who finds himself without a meaningful role in the new society, a position in which he is joined by a young academic who has just finished writing a doctoral thesis on the uses of the Arabic proposition ḥattā (reference). The play expresses the writer’s attitude towards the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy, and its main theme is the need to work for reconciliation in the Egyptian society (reference).
The three-act play Maṣīr Sursār was published after the Free Officers Revolution of 1952 and portrays a general disillusionment with the way the revolution panned out. The play portrays the world and social order of humans and cockroaches, and, as such, makes a comparison between their behaviours. It can be read as a critique on Nasser’s socialist regime (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales).
- Yūsuf Idrīs (1927 – 1991, Egypt) – al-Bayḍāʾ (‘The white woman’, 1970). This novel is narrated by a young Egyptian doctor, Yaḥyā, who falls hopelessly in love with a Greek woman, Sāntī. But when the married Sāntī does not reciprocate his love, he embarks on a soul-searching journey both on the political and personal level, in which he discovers to be self-centred and stubborn (reference). He proceeds to criticise the leftist movement in Nassarist Egypt, a movement he is himself a part, and the novel ends with the Yaḥyā’s arrest. Idrīs wrote the novel in 1959, a period in which the Nasser regime imprisoned many leftist figures, and first published it in Al-Jumhuriyyah, an Egyptian newspaper (also in I: Inter-religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships: Between Arabs and Westerners).
- Mīkhāʾīl Rūmān’s (1927 – 1973, Egypt) play al-Dukhān (‘The smoke’, 1962), deals with the subject of drug-addiction. It is set in the aftermath of the 1952 revolution by Jamal Abdel Nasser and criticizes of his oppressive practices that degraded human existence to its lowest level (reference) (see for more information D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Addition: Alcohol and Drugs).
- Nihād Sharīf (1932 – 2011, Egypt) – Qāhir al-Zamān (‘The conqueror of time’, 1972). Qāhir al-Zamān is about Kāmil, who works with a megalomaniac scientist, Ḥalīm, who invented a process to cryogenically preserve and revive animals and, as he later discovers, also secretly applies that process to humans. Shocked by this fact, Kāmil tries to escape the scientific facility together with Zayn, Ḥalīm’s niece who he has fallen in love with. The novel can be read as an allegory and critique of the Nasser period in which scientific and technological development was stagnant, and Egyptian society suffered under its ruler’s totalitarian and despotic manners (reference). The novel was made into a film in 1987 (also in S: Speculative Fiction: Science Fiction: On Earth).
- Bahāʾ Ṭāhir (1935-, Egypt) – Qālat Ḍuḥā (1985, English trans. As Doha Said, 2008). This novel is set in the 1960s of Nasser. The unnamed protagonist, an unambitious government employee, embarks on a brief but troubled love-affair with his married co-worker, Ḍuḥā. She eventually travels with him to Italy after he applies for a ministerial study grant, but when she nevertheless parts from him, the hero struggles to deal with her rejection, a feeling that is reflective of the disillusionment in post-revolutionary Egypt. In the meanwhile, the narrator watches with amazement how a parking attendant who he helped get a janitor job at the Ministry, quickly advances in his career.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Ali al-Raʿi. 1992. “Arabic Drama since the thirties.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 358-404, p. 384, 385
- ʿAbd al-Munʿam al-Shantūf. 2012. “‘Jūʿa’ li-Muḥammad al-Busāṭī: al-Ḥājah bi-Iʿtibāriha Alīghūriyyah Sardiyyah.” www.alquds.co.uk, 28 August 2012, https://www.alquds.co.uk/%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%B9-%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B7%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AC%D8%A9-%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B9%D8%AA%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A3/(last accessed 25 July 2023)
- Roger Allen. 2000. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 202
- EAL, p. 264
- Hilary Kilpatrick. 1992. “The Egyptian novel from Zaynab to 1980.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 223-270, p. 252
- Anwaar Abdelkhalik Abdalla. 2014. “A New Perspective on Mikhail Ruman’s ‘Smoke’ in ‘A President of His Own Republic’.” Arab Stages 1(1)
- Ian Campbell. 2018. Arabic Science Fiction. Palgrave MacMillan: London, p. 119-20, 143