1940 – 1950
As was the case in World War I, many Arab-majority countries and Arab soldiers were involved in World War II. Egypt became a base for the British war effort, which brought to the country greater economic dislocation. The large number of allied troops in the country had an alienating effect on the new generation of novelists.
It was also in the 1940s that the novel came to be considered as a serious literary form: writers had an audience in a new generation of educated people who sought for an adequate analysis of the social and political order and writers had more opportunities to publish their work, such as in magazines. Much of the literature written after the 1940s investigated society and its conflicts.
In the period since World War II, the pace of social change quickened. The revolutionary decade of the 1950s had a major impact on every country and society in the Arab-majority world, and in several societies that provided a fertile context for a further expansion of woman’s role in society. An example of this is the increasing role of women in the workplace, which inevitably led to tensions.