SOURCE: Allen, Roger. “The Artistry of Yūsuf Idrīs.” World Literature Today 55, no. 1 (winter 1981): 43-7.

In the following essay, Allen maintains that Idris's short fiction effectively conveys his social and political concerns, especially his focus on the urban poor.

Yūsuf Idrīs's first published work, a collection of short stories entitled Arkhas Layālī (The Cheapest Nights), appeared in 1954. He is perhaps the most prominent of a number of younger Egyptian writers whose vitality and forcefulness at that time reflected their sense of identification with the course of events in their country during the 1950s, and particularly the Revolution of 1952. On the broader political plane 1954 was also the year in which Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāsir (Gamal Abdul Nasser) became the de facto ruler of the country. The years that followed were heady ones indeed for both Egypt and its younger generation of intellectuals and writers...