Cold War Literature of the Middle East and North Africa
Throughout the Cold War, writers in the Middle East and North Africa took the pulse of their times, attempting to make sense of local and global transformations. While the first ten years of the Cold War found countries struggling to free themselves from the yoke of French and British colonialisms, the following decades saw them struggling against the increasing influence of the superpowers. The period split regional allegiances between the US and its European allies on the one hand (the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Israel and pre-1979 Iran) and the USSR on the other (Egypt, Algeria, Syria and Iraq). Organised chronologically, the chapter includes a discussion of writers from Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
