A new movement is emerging in Egyptian literature--urban in its energies; cosmopolitan in its national, Arabic, and western influences; and independent and rowdy in its voice. For centuries, Arabic literature mandated traditional, unchanging, highly structured language and forms. In the 1960s and 1970s, writers rebelled to write in a variety of vernaculars. Now, young Egyptian poets are inventing new ways of writing. Rejecting both traditional Arabic formalism and the vernacular rebellion--and, contradictorily, drawing equally on these traditions and others--they radically combine and...
A new movement is emerging in Egyptian literature--urban in its energies; cosmopolitan in its national, Arabic, and western influences; and independen...
