yehia haqqi

yehia haqqi was oneof thepioneers of modern egyptian literature. as well as being an important writer, he was an expert on arabic culture.

yehia haqqi was born in 1905 in the sayyida zeinab district of cairo. he graduated in law and worked for ashort time as alawyer. in 1929, he began his career as adiplomat and he worked abroad for more than 20years.

Literary career

In his literary career, he published four collections of short stories, one novel, ("Good Morning", translated from Arabic by Miriam Cooke), a novella (Umm Hashem's Lamp, twice translated from Arabic, by M.M.Badawi and Denys Johnson-Davies), and many articles some of which involved literary criticism of writers works, and other short stories besides. Sabri Hafez regards Haqqi as a pioneer in the writing of short stories, and experimenter in both form and style.^[2] Most literary critics commend Haqqi's style of writing and his language precision. He was editor of the literary magazine Al-Majalla from 1961 to 1971; this was a dangerous position, as the publication had been banned in Egypt by order of the government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. During that period and even before Haqqi championed budding Egyptian authors whose works he admired and believed in. In the 1960s also Haqqi took the very courageous step of retiring from writing short stories and novels, but he continued to write articles that critics described as artistic sketches.