Sample Solution

Arab problem per excellence”. 64
In the decades that followed the conclusion of the Second World War, the majority of countries within the Arab world went through a period of considerable turmoil and transformation, both political and social. With the emergence of two “super powers,” the United States and the Soviet Union, alignments, both international and local, were adjusted and in many case completely transformed. 65 The 1950s witnessed a number of revolutions in the Arab world, 1952 in Egypt and 1958 in Iraq and the Sudan. The long-sought goal of independence was granted to several nations: Sudan, Tunisia, and Morocco in 1956, Kuwait in 1961, and, after protected vicious civil conflict beginning in 1954, Algeria in 1962, as where conflicts between different people have proved more difficult to resolve; those involving the Kurds in Iraq and the people of the Southern part of the Sudan continue to pre-occupy the rules of those countries. There were attempts at bringing the idea and ideal of Arab unity to fruition: one which was implemented between Egypt and Syria – the United Arab Republic, 1958 – 1961; and another attempt to include Iraq in the Republic which was never brought to full fruition. The Egyptian Revolution and its charismatic leader, Jamal Abd al-Nasir, took the lead in forging new alliances which directly confronted the interests of Britain, the former occupying power. The arms deal with the Czechs in 1955, the military and political fiasco surrounding the tripartite attack on Suez in 1956 followed by the withdrawal of British and French forces from the region and the nationalization of Suez Canal, the beginnings of the movement of non-aligned nations; these were heady days indeed.
With all this movement and sense of dynamism, it is hardly surprising that this was also a period of intense discussion of the role of literature and the writer in society. 66 The decade of the 1950s witnessed the fierce argument over the issues of commitment. The foundation of the literary periodical al-Adab in 1953 was and has remained the most obvious symbol of the development in these decades of a movement whose base are well summarized in the quotation from Raif al-Khuri to the effect that “the Arab writer is committed, particularly in this period of Arab national revival, to producing works with a conscious and deliberate political meaning.” 67 As will be shown, the novel, “as the model by which society conceives of itself, the discourse in and through which it articulates the world,” 68 has been one of the primary areas of such activity and of critical commentary on it.
And yet amid all the dynamism there was also profound doubts about the direction in which the Arab world was heading and the means which were used to get it there. Litterateurs are not slow to express their views along these lines, often at considerable cost to their own well-being. Poems were