To explore the life of Mahmud Sami al-Barudi is to gain a nuanced perspective on the many facets - the perils and promises - of change in the rapidly modernizing Egypt of the nineteenth century. Al-Barudi, sole scion of a Turko-Circassian elite family that clung precariously to a legacy of position and power, turned his military education into a government career that ended with his elevation to the office of prime minister. He served briefly before the British invasion in 1882 put an end to Egypt’s independence for seventy years. As prime minister, al-Barudi focused on drafting and passing into law Egypt’s first constitution, an achievement that was summarily swept aside by the British occupation. Similarly, the prime minister’s efforts to modernize and improve the educational system were systematically undermined by the policies of colonial rule in the 1880s and 1890s. Although his reforms ultimately failed, al-Barudi was recognized among his contemporaries as the most consistent supporter of liberalism and eventually democratic representation and constitutionalism. For his boldness, he paid a price. He was exiled by the British to Ceylon for seventeen years and returned to Egypt in 1901 as a blind, prematurely aged, and broken man. Even before he made an impact as a political leader, al-Barudi had made a name for himself as the most original and adventurous poet of his generation. DeYoung charts the development of al-Barudi’s poetry through his youth, his career in government, his philosophical and elegiac reflections while in exile, and his return to Egypt at the beginning of a new century. Connecting the themes found in his more influential poems - among the more than 400 lyrics he composed - to the turbulent events of his political life and to his equally fierce desire to innovate artistically throughout his literary career, DeYoung offers a vivid portrait of one of the most influential pioneers of Arabic poetry.

In the summer of 1888, Ameen Fares Rihani (1876-1940) left the shores of his native Lebanon to begin a new life in the bustling metropolis of New York City. Few could have guessed at the time that the young Rihani would soon become one of the most famous and distinctive Arab writers of the era, transforming tales from his crossings between East and West into a clarion call for understanding and cooperation between a rising world power and an Arab world that was suspended between cultural renaissance and political recolonization. Less than a year after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the Ameen Rihani Institute and the American University Center for Global Peace convened a distinguished group of Arab, American, and European scholars for an international symposium in Washington, D.C. Inspired by the conviction that Rihani's humane vision still addresses many of the most vitally important issues in global affairs, the participants in this symposium prepared stimulating writings on every facet of Rihani's intellectual journey, literary career, political advocacy, and life as a protagonist of Arab-American understanding. The result is this remarkable book demonstrating the extraordinary nature of Ameen Rihani's work as a cultural ambassador; the depth of his affinities for such writers as Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau, and Tolstoy; and the enduring relevance of his commitments to tolerance, universalism, reconciliation, and peace.

This is a comprehensive study of the most widely celebrated of twentieth-century Iraqi writers, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, whose premature death in 1964 from Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) was lamented in cultural circles throughout the Arab world. This book makes available to English-speaking readers for the first time an unprecedented amount of information about a single Arab poet (including a large selection of previously untranslated poetry). In addition, it places the poet's work in the broader context of postcolonial resistance to Western hegemony, illuminating obscure aspects of his writing and relating it to other authors of his time.