INTRODUCTION

In modern Arabic literature the close interaction between literature and socio-political issues makes it difficult to isolate one from the other. The importance of the socio-cultural dimension is particularly relevant in dealing with narrative forms, because narrative mediates human experience and derives its significance from probing it. This chapter describes briefly the context necessary for an understanding of the modern Arabic short story throughout the various stages of its development, and also outlines the history of the genre itself and the development of its formal and thematic elements. As is shown in the most comprehensive survey of the genre, published in The Kenyon Review (vols 30–32, 1968–70), the short story has been marginalized in most advanced western cultures. In the Arab world, however, as in other developing and semi-developed countries such as India, South Africa and Yugoslavia, for various reasons the short story has emerged as the most popular and arguably the most significant literary medium.

In Arabic literature, while one can trace its descent from other traditional forms of narrative going back to the Arabian Nights, the short story in the modern sense of the term is a new literary genre that developed in the last few decades of the nineteenth century and reached maturity only in the early decades of this century.