Literature, Art and National Identity in the Era of Social Reform

The period which extends from the reign of the Khedive Isma’il (1863-79) until the 1920’s, when Egypt became one of the new independent nation states of the Arab World, saw radical transformations in the forms of literary expression in the general area of high culture. These transformations were most apparent and dramatic in prose literature, for in spite of all the elements of narrative and drama which undoubtedly exist in pre-modern Arabic, the modern forms of the short story, the play, and..