Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, "A Nose and Three Eyes"...

How did the state become Christian in late antiquity? Many scholars have traced the Christianization of the Roman world in the centuries following the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312 CE. Robin Whelan, however, turns his attention away from the usual suspects in such ...  Show more

The Poetics of Incivility: Satire and Subversion in Modern Arab Culture (Cornell UP, 2026) explores impolite modes of expression—satire, crude humor, and rudeness—as a critical lens for both aesthetic innovation and sociopolitical critique. In the Arab world—from Cairo's Tahrir ...  Show more

At this crucial moment in Egypt’s story, this month’s World Book Club talks to one of the country’s great writers, Ahdaf Soueif, about her internationally acclaimed novel The Map of Love.In her Booker-shortlisted bestseller Soueif weaves together two poignant stories separated by ...  Show more

Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College, Jonathan Smolin, discusses his book "The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser," which examines the life and work of Ihsan Abdel Quddous who played an immens ...  Show more

Harriett Gilbert talks to acclaimed Egyptian writer Alaa Al-Aswany about his bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building. It was the Arab world’s number-one bestseller for five years running after it was published in 2002. The Yacoubian Building interweaves the stories of a group of ...  Show more

In 1960s Egypt, a group of writers exploded onto the literary scene, transforming the aesthetic landscape. Yasmine Ramadan’s Space in Modern Egyptian Fiction (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) explores how this literary generation presents a marked shift in the representation of ...  Show more