SOURCE: Cobham, Catherine. “Sex and Society in Yusuf Idris: ‘Qā'al-Madīna’.” Journal of Arabic Literature 6 (1975): 78-88.

In the following essay, Cobham examines the theme of sex in Qā'al-Madīna, contending that Idris “discusses sex because it is such an important part of the differences in culture between different social groups, not for the sake of his own erotic fantasies.”

Yūsuf Idrīs shows his most shrewd understanding of Egyptian society and its changing values through his stories of sexual relationships and his exploration of the nature of love, need, desire, repression, frustration, and masculinity and femininity themselves within these relationships. In his tales of village life, like “Hādithat Sharaf”,¹ he demonstrates with lucid simplicity the workings of the process by which the community forces its members to conform to accepted standards of behaviour. Sex is the touchstone of social intercourse, and the attitude of...