Introduction
1. From commitment to exile: Zakariyya Tamir the forefather of the modern Syrian short story
2. Changing masculinity: hadatha, nationalism and authoritarianism in the 1960s and 1970s
3. The modern female: female sexuality in the stories of the hadathi period until the 1970s
4. From object to subject: multiplicity, transgression and the sexualisation of the female
5. The fall of the strong man: virility, homosexuality and the qabaday
Conclusion