Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and - of course - Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who, midway through the last century, under the influence of Western literature, began to practice genres of creative writing that were new to the traditions of classical Arabic.
In the first story in this volume, the very short 'Story in the Form of a Petition, ' Yahya Hakki demonstrates his ease with gentle humor, a form rare in Arabic writing. In the...