Selected Studies in Modern Arabic Narrative: History, Genre, Translation (Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies)

No Western scholar has contributed as much to the study of modern Arabic narrative as has Roger Allen. His doctoral dissertation was the very first Oxford D.Phil. in modern Arabic literature, completed in 1968 under the supervision of Mustafa Badawi. That same year, he took a position in Arabic language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, the oldest professorial post in Arabic in the United States. Roger Allen has been phenomenally prolific: fifty books and translations, two hundred articles and counting-on Arabic language pedagogy, on translation, on Arabic literary history, criticism and literature. He is also one of the most decorated and acclaimed translators of Arabic literature. The present volume brings together sixteen of Roger Allen's articles on modern Arabic narrative, with a focus on genre, translation and literary history, and features analyses of the works of Rashid Abu Jadrah, Bensalem Himmich, Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, and Tayeb Salih.

Roger Allen had a distinguished forty-three-year career at the University of Pennsylvania as professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, which he chaired from 2005 to 2011. He has served as editor of several major projects, as well as leading journals, including the Journal of Arabic Literature, Middle Eastern Literatures, and Al-'Arabiyya, all three of which devoted special issues to his life's work.