Arabic Prose Poetry in 1930s Egypt: Engaging a Forgotten Archive

Arabic prose poetry (al-shi'r al-manthur) is a controversial yet to date understudied literary genre. In this book, Nevine Fayek traces the origins of the genre by focusing on the works of 1930s Egyptian poets and the periodicals in which they published. She puts their work into the historical context of the development of Egyptian modernism and the Arab Nahda, using the private archives of poets such as poet Husayn 'Afif (1902 – 1979). In so doing, she reconstructs a network of relations between modernist intellectuals from different generations, social classes, educational backgrounds and political affiliations, who engaged with Arabic prose poetry to varying extents in their work. She makes the case that this movement has been largely overlooked in the critical and historical discourse, preventing it from receiving the recognition it rightfully deserves as part of modern Egyptian literature. She also reveals the complexity of Egyptian literary archives and what has been excluded from the ‘canon’.