The Politics of Melodrama

Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (1919-1990) is the most popular and prolific writer of Arabic fiction in the twentieth century. The Politics of Melodrama is the first book to take on this giant of Arabic fiction and consider both his outsized cultural influence and consequential position in Egyptian politics. Jonathan Smolin frames the work of Abdel Kouddous not as mere lowbrow romantic melodrama, but as an entirely new model of Arabic fiction as dissent-contesting the fate of the 1952 revolution, condemning Nasser's betrayal of democracy, and grappling with depths of guilt at what Egypt had become.