Egyptian Writers between History and Fiction

Taking as the basis of her study the premise that the boundaries of history and literature are difficult to define, and that the two disciplines represent two related types of narrative discourse, Samia Mehrez in a series of six essays delves into the work of three leading contemporary Egyptian the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Sonallah Ibrahim, and Gamal al-Ghitani. As the author says in her Introduction, the essays ‘’attempt to bridge the gap between the literary and the historical, the personal and the collective, the aesthetic and the ideological. The three writers whose careers and works are discussed in these chapters represent some of the most crucial contributions to the larger signifying entity that has engaged the Arab reader in many transformative ways. . . . The authors and their works provide an indispensable (hi)story of the literary field itself, mapping, through their own development as artistic producers, the history of the context which they inhabit and in which they produce.’’