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Gadfly of the Egyptian State
| Article
# : |
18920 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1991 |
2,308 Words |
| Author
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Trevor Le Gassick
Trevor Le Gassick is professor of Arabic literature in the
Department of Near East Studies at the University of Michigan.
He is the author of Major Themes in Modern Arabic Thought as
well as several translations of Arabic literature. |
The development of Arabic prose, both fiction and nonfiction, over the past century has occurred largely in Egypt. By far the most populous of the Arab countries, Egypt, with its many urban centers and multimillion-inhabitant capital, provides the readership potential essential for viable publication and distribution of books and periodicals. Egypt, moreover, had the earliest and most comprehensive contact with Western civilization and culture, and the country's leadership has for two centuries acknowledged and generally welcomed the resultant influences and developments. One of these influences has been the adoption of the novel and the short story, narrative forms unknown in early Arabic literature.
Throughout the past half century, the most widely read and influential figure in Egyptian publishing and writing was the late Ihsan Abd al-Quddus, who died on January 11, 1990. Even though his older and now internationally famous compatriot Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize in literature, is recognized to be a greater genius and a far more sophisticated author, it could well be argued that the influence of Abd al-Quddus on the Arab cultural scene has been broader. In addition, his writings have been more reflective of the dominant issues and concerns of Arab society throughout the period than those of any other writer. The popularity of both men, incidentally, has been much enhanced by their success in films and television and, interestingly, it was Mahfouz who wrote scenarios for some of the movies derived from the novels of Abd al-Quddus.
The parental background of Abd al-Quddus is of particular interest and significance. His mother, Rose (or Fatima) al Youssef, orphaned and of apparently Muslim Lebanese background, was brought to Egypt by her adoptive Muslim parents and left, while still a preteen, in the charge of the owner of a theatrical group in Alexandria. She later married Muhammad Abd al-Quddus, an engineer turned actor, who was from a conservative Muslim family, and Ihsan was born to them in 1919. Divorced and remarried, his mother retired from the stage in 1925 and gave her own name to a magazine she founded, Rose al-Youssef, ever since Egypt's brightest and liveliest broadly cultural and political publication.
Ihsan, a precocious youth who had written since his teens, took a law degree in 1942 and soon thereafter joined his mother's staff. In 1945 he wrote an article demanding the recall of Britain's unpopular and domineering ambassador, who had critically wounded Egypt's national pride in February 1942 by surrounding the king's palace with British tanks and requiring the appointment of a prime
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