Can a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present. David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power. Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.
Committed to Disillusion
Activist Writers in Egypt from the 1950s to the 1980s
David DiMeo
8 October 2016
272 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774167614
For sale worldwide
35
Related products
Alif 23
Literature and the Sacred
Edited by Shahab AhmedStudies in this collection treat varied aspects of the relationship between literary discourses and ideas of the sacred in different cultures and epochs. Contributions by established and emerging scholars from the Arab world, South Asia, Europe, and North America examine issues such as the treatment of the sacred in literary texts and traditions, the literary dimensions of sacred texts, the impact of the sacred on literary imagination, the role of the literary in sacred experience, and the contestations between the respective projects of literature and the sacred over the constitution of cultural and social norms. Alif vol. 23 Contributors: English and French sections: Nasr Abu Zaid, Karen Campbell, Angelica DeAngelis, Markus Dressler, Michael Frishkopf, Scott Kugle, Heba Machhour, Olivier Sécardin, Marla Segol. Arabic section: Farid Abu Si’da, Boutros Hallaq, Ahmed Taher Hassanein, Anwar Ibrahim, Richard Jacquemond, Salah Kamel, Ali Mabrook, Sa’id Tawfiq.
...read more
Paperback
500 pp.17X24cm
75
Alif 34
World Literature: Perspectives and Debates
Edited by Andrew RubinAs one of the first non-European journals to critically address the category of Weltliteratur bilingually from the perspective of the Global South, this special issue of Alif addresses this problem theoretically and empirically. The critical conversation about the problem of the category of Weltliteratur is not only extended beyond the European and North American sphere that has largely dominated and framed the discussion of Weltliteratur, but is juxtaposed formally in a way that permits us to understand that there are other “world literatures” that allow us to reexamine the contending theories, practices, and underlying assumptions of Weltliteratur. Essays in this volume emphasize in different ways the inherent tension between postcolonial studies and “world criticism,” and to that extent open up new realms for the discovery of new knowledges, new epistemes, modes of conversation, and communication.
...read more
Paperback
500 pp.16.5X24cm
75
Alif 19
Gender and Knowledge: Contributions of Gender Perspectives to Intellectual Formations
Edited by Ferial GhazoulContributors are from Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, USA, India, Britain, and France. English Section: Saad Al Bazei, Doris Shoukri, Aisha Abdel Rahman (Bint al-Shati’), Melissa Matthes, Huda Lutfi, Srilata Ravi, Brinda Mehta, Maijan Al-Ruwaili, David Blanks, Jehan Al-Bayoumi, Nasr Abu Zeid Arabic Section: Hoda Elsadda, Sherine Abu el Naga, Sherif Hetata, Buthaina Al Nasiri, Salma Jayyusi, Nasr Abu Zeid, Muhammad Mahmoud, Virginia Woolf, Olfat Al Roubi, Heba Ra’ouf Ezzat, Muhammad Brairi, Julia Kristeva
...read more
Paperback
500 pp.17X24cm
75
Alif 35
New Paradigms in the Study of Modern “Middle Eastern” Literatures
Edited by Amy MotlaghVernacular poetry and folktales, standardized Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, as well as literary works by Middle Easterners in different European languages offer a complex regional literary field. While comparative work among the “classical” traditions of these literatures is undertaken without comment, scholarship on their modern traditions is suspended between the exigencies of imperialism, nationalism, and academic parochialism. This issue of Alif is devoted to the exploration of those persistent ties and affinities, as well as to the attempt to recover and discover new or enduring linkages between literatures, languages, and cultures in a world where they are largely forgotten or wilfully ignored.
...read more
30 October 2015
Paperback
500 pp.16.5X24cm
75