Modern Literature: Its Pros and Cons

After World War I and following the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, various forms of freedom emerged that the Arab nation had not known since the end of its bygone eras of prosperity. The first to race to achieve this freedom were writers and literati in general; they published writings in newspapers that addressed topics previously unavailable and exercised an almost absolute freedom. They thus demonstrated a tendency towards renewal in the entirety of modern literary production; they invented their schools of thought in poetry, short stories, and essays, and staged a revolution against everything old, which resulted in a widespread literary rivalry between proponents of the modern and the ancient in every literary genre. This literary situation was the main concern of the cultural scene at that stage, and the Dean of Arabic Literature, Taha Hussein, addresses it in his book before us, maintaining neutrality as much as possible, despite being one of the proponents and pioneers of renewal.