Tawfiq al-Hakim

Tawfiq al-Hakim (Alexandria, 1898 - 1987) was an Egyptian writer who worked in Arabic and helped pioneer the modern novel and, above all, modern drama in the language. The son of an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother, he shows how Arabic literature took up a form that came from Europe and reshaped it for Egyptian audiences.

He grew up between Alexandria and the province of Beheira, where his father worked as a judge. After finishing secondary school in Cairo he studied law and spent time in Paris, where his interest drifted toward the theatres and the opera rather than toward the doctoral thesis that had taken him there. Back in Egypt he worked as a prosecutor, a journalist and, later, head of the National Library.

He wrote articles, novels, poems and essays, but he is remembered mainly as a prolific playwright. His philosophical plays, such as The People of the Cave (1933) and Shahrazad (1934), moved away from popular melodrama, and that distance drew criticism. The first production by the National Theatre Troupe did not succeed, and he came to think of much of his theatre as work for reading rather than performance. Later he turned to episodes from Egyptian history and to contemporary tensions, such as the blood feud at the centre of Death Song or the social upheaval after the 1952 revolution.

His legacy lies in giving Arabic theatre a tradition of its own and a readership, and in opening a path for later writers, even though some younger critics found his work dated and distant from everyday concerns.