The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arabic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2026) redefines how we engage with Arabic literary traditions in a global context. The volume situates modern Arabic literature at the forefront of debates about time, language, geography, and media, bringing together leading scholars whose essays explore its intersections with postcolonial, feminist, and ecological thought, as well as its transnational and translational dimensions. From the Nahda to the Anthropocene, from fuṣḥā to ʿāmmiyya, and from the Maghrib to the Arab diaspora, the Companion maps the evolving contours of Arabic literary production and places Arabic literature at the centre of comparative and world literary studies.

The Companion is organized around four questions: When is the time of modern Arabic literature? What are the languages of modern Arabic literature? What is the geography of modern Arabic literature? And what are the mediums of modern Arabic literature? The volume brings these questions together through essays and close readings that reconsider established categories of periodization, language, geography, canon formation, translation, and literary media. It features an international group of scholars working across modern Arabic literature, comparative literature, translation, literary history, and world literature.

Written by the Companion’s co-editors, Michael Allan and Zeina G. Halabi, the introduction asks how Arabic literature might reshape rather than simply enter existing frameworks of world literature. It considers inherited approaches to periodization, language, geography, and canon formation and proposes new ways of thinking about modern Arabic literature through these categories.

-    AccessThe Companion through your academic institution 
-    Read the introduction of The Companion
-    Watch Co-Editors Allan and Halabi discuss the Companion in Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour
-    Learn about the research of Zeina G. Halabi