The Egyptian Novelistic Prose of the 1950s and the Tendencies of its Development: a Comparative Analysis

The article investigates the common tendencies and the diversity of the Egyptian novelistic prose of the 1950s. We analyzed the following novels: The Earth (1954) by ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sharqawi, The Cairo Trilogy (1956–1957) by Naguib Mahfouz, The Sin (1959) by Yusuf Idris, The Open Door (1960) by Latifa al-Zayyat, and The Blue Flashlights (1960) by Mahmoud Teymour. Despite the fact that some of the most significant novels were written in the 1950s (The Trilogy, The Sin, and The Open Door are in the top-100 of the Arabic novels of the 20th century, Arab writers union, 2001), the researchers have been taking into account either the authors one by one, or the modern Arabic literature in general. We drew the attention to the national features and the close context in which these influential Egyptian novels were created. By comparing their plots, characters’ systems, style and language, narrative, and the conflicts of the pieces, we came to the following results: the realism in Egypt flourished in the 1950s; the socialist, critical, psychological branches of the realistic literature are represented. The writers’ interest was dedicated to the national liberation struggle. The prose of the decade is either urban or rustic. The difference between writers’ generation appears in the language of the dialogues (Standard Arabic or Egyptian dialect). In conclusion, the realism in Egypt had reached its mature stage in the 1950s, and during the decade, the tendencies appeared that had led to the rise of modernism in the 1960s.

arabic literature, modern arabic literature, novel, Egyptian literature, Egyptian realism, socialist realism, arabic modernism, Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, arabic prose