1952 Revolution in Egypt
This revolution led to the overthrow of the monarchy and to the installment of Jamal Abdel Nasser two years after the revolution (see in 1954 Nasser comes to power in Egypt). After the revolution, a young group of writers made their appearance who had known prisons and concentration camps before the revolution. This group was headed by Nuʿamān ʿĀshūr’s (1918 – 1987, Egypt), who himself wrote many plays. Furthermore, many politically leftist oriented writers felt freer to express their commitment to the cause of the poor and oppressed.
The Free Officers’ government called for the breaking of the great landowners’ power, which was seen as a step towards social justice called for by many Egyptian writers. It also declared the intention to rid of British bases and end foreign domination reflecting the profound and wide-spread nationalist feeling. This meant the partial loss of “cosmopolitan Egypt” which was also accompanied with the rise of more Muslim-centric nationalism.
Furthermore, the pan-Arabist ideology and the emphasis on a homogenous and hegemonic national culture in post-colonial Egyptian discourse resulted in the marginalization or exclusion of regional identities and cultural forms from the national imaginary. It was important in this period that literature (and other cultural and political expressions) supported the creation of a national culture. It did not take very long before this tendency to authoritarianism created large-felt disappointment and disillusion, all expressed in the literature at the time, and aroused the misgivings of those who valued intellectual freedom and political pluralism.