Gender, nation, and the Arabic novel : Egypt, 1892-2008 / Hoda Elsadda.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-239) and index.

Introduction: gender, nation, and the canon of the Arabic novel -- Beginnings: discourses on ideal manhood and ideal womanhood -- The new man: conflicting masculinities in the fiction of Haikal, al-Mazini, and al-Rafi'i -- Tawfiq al-Hakim and the civilizational novel -- Naguib Mahfouz's trilogy: a national allegory -- Latifa al-Zayyat: gender and nationalist politics -- Defeated masculinities in Sonallah Ibrahim -- The personal is political: debating the new writing in the 1990s -- The postcolonial nomadic novel -- Liminal spaces/liminal identities: Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Ahmed Alaidy, and Muhammad 'Ala' al-Din -- Postscript: after Tahrir: imagining otherwise.

A nuanced understanding of literary imaginings of masculinity and femininity in the Egytian novel. Gender studies in Arabic literature have become equated with women's writing, leaving aside the possibility of a radical rethinking of the Arabic literary canon and Arab cultural history. While the 'woman question' in the Arabic novel has received considerable attention, the 'male question' has gone largely unnoticed. Now, Hoda Elsadda bucks that trend. Foregrounding voices that have been marginalised alongside canonical works, she engages with new directions in the novel tradition.