The first edition of this book, completed in 1970, was hailed as a major contribution to scholarship on the development of Arabic fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this revised and greatly expanded second edition, Matti Moosa has added five entirely new chapters - one on the popular dialogues of Abd Allah Nadim, and four devoted to twentieth century fiction culminating with the novels of Maguib Mahfouz.

He has also incorporated the results of more than two decades of fresh research. Moosa's exhaustive discussion, demonstrating the influence of both Western and Islamic ideology and culture, presents many works of fiction for the first time to Western students of Arabic literature.