In this succinct introduction to modern Arabic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Paul Starkey traces its development from the medieval Arabic literary tradition—beginning in the sixth-century with nomadic Bedouin poetry and the Qur'an—through new literary forms adapted from Western imaginative literature. He explores the interaction between social, political, and cultural change in the Middle East and northern Africa and the development of a modern Arabic literary tradition. 

From the early nineteenth century through World War I, the Western genres of poetry, the novel, short story, and drama reached various parts of the Arabic-speaking world. Starkey discusses the resultant evolution of Arabic literature in separate sections on poetry, prose writing, and the theatre in Egypt, the Levant, Iraq, and northern Africa, from early contact through the emergence of women's literary voices in the 1960s to contemporary writers.

Arabic terms are presented in transcription, and an extensive bibliography provides suggestions for further reading. Modern Arabic Literature is the perfect introduction for readers interested in the contemporary Middle East or in comparative, colonial, world, or modern literature.