Introduction: Religion, the Egyptian Novel and the New Literary Sensibility

Abstract

Having discussed the religious/secular dialectic at length in Part One, this chapter sets the scene for the Egyptian novel’s engagements with religion post-1967. It discusses literary developments in the Egyptian novel from the late 1960s, specifically the turathi trend and ascendance of experimental narrative strategies, in the context of wider cultural shifts around this time, including the religious resurgence, and considers how these literary and cultural developments affected the representation of religion on the pages of the Egyptian novel.