Born: al-Bayrum village, Sharqiyya province, Egypt, 19 May 1927. Education: Attended school in Faqus in Sharqiyya; Dameitta; al-Mansura in Daqahliyya; Zaqaziq in Sharqiyya; Qasr al-’Ayni medical school, Cairo, 1945-51. Military Service: Secretary of the University Executive committee for armed combat, 1951. Family: Married; three children. Career: Physician, 1952; medical inspector in the poor section of Darb al-Ahmar district, Cairo; head of the literary department at Rosaal-Yusuf, al-Sha’b, al-Masry, al-Jumhuriyya then al-Ahram newspaper, 1961-91. Awards: Hiwar International Literary prize (refused), 1965; Medal of the Republic, 1966. Died: 1 August 1991.
Publications
Collections
Al-’Askary al-aswad. 1962.
Al-Sayyida Viryinna. 1977.
In the Eye of the Beholder: Tales of Egyptian Life from the Writings of Yusuf Idris, edited by Roger Allen. 1978.
Rings of Burnished Brass, translated by Catherine Cobham. 1984.
Al-Qisas al-qisirah. 2 vols. 1990-91.
Three Egyptian Short Stories; translated with introduction by Saad El-Gabalawy. 1991.
Short Stories
Arkhas al-layali. 1954; as The Cheapest Nights and Other Stories,translated by Wadida Wassef, 1990.
Qissat Hubb in Jumhuriyyat Farahaat. 1956; as City of Love and Ashes, translated by R. Neil Hewison, 1999.
Alysa kadhalika [Isn't It So]. 1957.
Al-Batal [The Hero]. 1957.
Hadithat sharaf [Matters of Honor]. 1959.
Akhir al-dunya [The End of the World]. 1961.
Qa’ al-madina [City Dregs]. 1964.
Lughat al-ay ay [The Language of Pain]. 1965.
Al-Naddaha [The Siren].1969; as La Sirene, et autres nouvelles,translated by Luc Barbulesco and Phillipe Cardinal, 1986.
Mashuq al-hams. 1969.
Laylat sayf. 1970.
Bayt min lahm [House of Flesh]. 1971.
Ana sultan qanun al-wujud [I Am Sultan, the Law of Being]. 1980.
JumhuriyyatFarahat [Farahat's Republic]. 1981.
Uqtulha [Kill Her]. 1982.
Al-’Atab ‘ala al-nazar [Sight Is to Blame]. 1987.
Abu al-rijal. 1988; as A Leader of Men, translated by Saad Elkhadem, 1988.
Plays
Malik il-qutn [Cotton's King]. 1963.
Al-Lahza al-hariga [Critical Moment]. 1958.
Al-Mahzala al-ardiyya [The Face of the World]. 1966. A
l-Bahlawan [The Clown]. 1963.
Al-Farafir [The Flip Flaps]. 1963-64.
Al-Mukhattatin [The Stripped Ones]. 1969.
Al-Jins al-thalith [The Third Sex]. 1971.
Al-Irada. 1985.
Novels
Al-Haram (produced 1965). 1959; as Sinners, translated by Kristin Peterson-Ishaq, 1984; as Le Tabou, translated into French by France M. Douvier, 1987.
Al-’Ayb (produced 1967). [The Shame] 1963.
Rijal wa thiran. [Men and Oxen] 1964.
Al-Bayda’. [The White Woman] 1970.
Iktishaf qara. 1972.
Bisaraha ghayr Mutlaqa. 1968.
Niyu Yurk. 1980.
Al-Ab al-gha’ib. 1987.
Essays
Kitab nahwa masrah ‘arabi. 1974.
Mufakkirat doctor Yusuf Idris. 2 vols., 1977.
Bahth ‘an al-Sadat. 1984.
Ahammiyyat an natathaqqaf ya nas. 1985.
Faqr al-fikr wa fikr al-faqr. 1985.
Intiba’at mustafizza. 1986.
Khulw al-bal. 1986.
‘Azf munfarid. 1987.
Al-’Idz al-’arabi. 1989.
Islam bi-la difaf. 1989.
Madinat al-mala’ika. 1989.
Dhikrayat Yusuf Idris. 1991.
Yusuf Idris ‘ala fawhat burkan. 1991.
Critical Studies:
Broken Idols: The Death of Religion as Reflected in Two Short Stories by Idris and Mahfouz by Mona Mikhail, 1974; Sex and Society in Yusuf Idris: Qa’ al-Madina by Catherine Cobham, 1975; The Search for the Authentic Self within Idris’s City by Mona Mikhail, 1977; Studies in the Short Fiction of Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris by Mona Mikhail, 1992; Yusuf Idris: Changing Vision by Dalya Cohen-Mor, 1992; Egyptian Drama and Social Change: A Study of Thematic and Artistic Development in Yusuf Idris’s Plays by Dorota Rudnicka-Kassem, 1993; Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris, edited by Roger Allen, 1994; Critical Perspectives on Yusuf Idris by Issa J. Boullata, 1995; The Western Encounter in the Works of Yusuf Idris by Rasheed El-Eanny, 1997; The Short Stories of Yusuf Idris: A Modern Egyptian Author by P. M. Kurpershoek, 1997.
Yusuf Idris, though trained as a physician, was considered the greatest short story writer of the Arab world. He was the first Egyptian realist writer to break down the divide between fiction and reality, introducing new themes, atmospheres, and social groups into Arab fiction and drama. With vivid images of human interaction, he explored the psychology of the oppressed classes in both the village and the city and created narratives of social and political significance. He explored themes of love, politics, and changing social and moral values through stories of sexual relationships. For Idris, sex highlighted the hypocrisy in society, either by reinforcing the human comedy or by shifting events in the direction of tragedy. Idris’ foremost accomplishment was his incorporation of the spoken language in the different dialogues of his characters. This incorporation of the spoken Arabic language heightened the sense of realism in creating a more truthful picture of characters’ lives, traditions, failings, and virtues as they struggled against the restrictions of class in Egyptian society.
Idris’s stylistic devices varied from realism and existentialism to absurdity, all in reaction to the changing political conditions of Egypt. This variation is demonstrated in the chronology of Idris’s work. He began as a social realist in the 1950s, and his Marxist views led him to address contemporary problems and their impact upon Egyptian life. His themes during this early period included Egypt’s transition from a feudal to a socialist society, the plight of the Egyptian lower classes, and issues of child labor, overpopulation, and migrant workers. The setting for most of Idris’s early work was the Egyptian village or the urban slum areas of Cairo. The characters were mostly peasants and migrant villagers with whom many readers could identify. Idris’s collection Arkhas al-layali (The Cheapest Night) depicted popular literature, Al-Batal (The Hero) portrayed patriotic sentiments of fighting the British occupation, Love Story (Qissat hubb) and Al-Bayda’ [White Woman] weaved a narrative of Egyptians’ defense of their country’s independence and with love stories. Al-Haram (Sinners) addressed moral issues such as the permeation of corruption in the government and described the group psychology of two poor social groups, the unprivileged seasonal migrant workers and the villagers.
Idris examined social injustice and class struggle through the sexual relationships of his characters, especially the sexual relationships between people of different classes which highlighted the wide gap between public morality and private behavior. In the village, sexual relations are sanctioned within the marriage framework. The moral codes overlap and are at odds among classes. Predictably it is the affluent who can afford secrecy and successfully avoided punishment, a privilege not afforded to the working class. Generally, the glamour of the city suggests misfortunes. The poor, whose identities and lives change drastically in the city, struggle with varying standards of behavior that create confusion. For example, poverty and deprivation lead a police sergeant to fantasize and drive a servant woman to theft, immorality, and prostitution in Al-’Ayb (The Shame) and Qa’ al-madina [City Dregs]. In Al-Naddaha [Sirens], the loss of innocence is a metaphor for the search for identity and freedom.
But Idris’s vision later became absurd and surreal with an emphasis on the conflict between the vulnerable individual and the hostile or cruelly indifferent institution. His style became more economical, and the narrative mode became more experimental in its use of time and imagery, with the line between reality and dream often blurred. This change in the style developed from the degenerating political environment, the absence of freedom, and a desire to reconcile science and metaphysics. Abandoning his realist approach for this metaphysical style, Idris created new works that generated various responses, from support to rejection from his realist fans as well as those opposing the use of dialects in literature. His foremost absurdist work, Al-Farafir [The Flip Flaps], written during a time of great change and challenge in Egypt, caused a literary uproar for two weeks in 1964 before it was banned. The play marked him as the leader of the post-socialist rebellion. Fliplap, named after its protagonist, is a two-person dialogue between a master and a slave. The slave, Fliplap, imparts Idris’s social, political, moral, and metaphysical ideas through allusions and symbols. Although the play is a political satire of the regime, its distinctiveness stems from the way it engages the audience to find alternative social and political positions that secure dignity, self-respect, liberty, and egalitarianism. Among the other themes discussed are marriage, birth, death, the structural hierarchy of society, and social injustice. In this play, Idris argues that the problem is originally cosmic.
The significance of Al-Farafir lies in Idris’s experimental approach to breaking down the barriers between actors and audiences by adopting an indigenous form of popular drama, particularly the shadow plays, to modern theatre. Such settings, in Idris’s opinion, heighten the collective experience in which actors and audiences engage in an interactive dialogue to reach a solution to problems. In his work Towards an Egyptian Theatre, Idris asserted the existence of theatrical roots in Egyptian folklore and called for the exploration of settings and themes different from the traditional ones in an effort to reach a wide audience. Critics, however, accredited his new form of theatre to the Western dramatic tradition of Brecht and Pirandello. Subsequently, Idris wrote a second political allegory Al-Mukhattatun [The Stripped Ones] that lashes out at the totalitarian, one-party State and discusses man’s control over his destiny. His fantasy Al-Jins al-thalith [The Third Sex], on the other hand, did not receive much critical attention.
Idris’s existentialist views are illustrated in his parabolic religious story (”A Table from the Sky” from the collection of Hadithat sharaf [Matters of Honor]), in which folklore and religious metaphors are weaved together to discuss the relationship between man and God and to suggest that the protagonist challenge those teachings. As in ”The Language of Pain,” living is, according to Idris, freeing oneself from the standard rules of society through experiencing pain. Idris assumed the role of a historian recording the social and political conditions during Naser’s era in his work Jabarti of the Sixties, al-Jabarti being the great Egyptian historian of the 19th century.
Idris enriched literary life with numerous productions in drama, fiction, and critical studies and his work provides an incandescent mirror of the time through which he lived.
