ADVANCED ARABIC READERS. I, SELECTIONS FROM THE MODERN NOVEL AND SHORT STORY.

The J,nglish-speaking student of Arabic-especially of
t he contemporary literary idiom-has long faced a problem
i n f inding reading material chosen and prepared with his
particular needs in mind. This reader and a compa nion
vo lume consisting of examples of expository prose represent
one of the efforts towards the amelioration of this situation
which are being carried out with the support of the
Off i c e of Education.
~rabic literature , whether clas sic~l or modern, i s
r i ch and varied a nd it is not enough to decide that a r eader
is nee ded or to make selections a t r a ndom. A few words a re
the r efore in orde r regarding the approa ch and aims of t he
~di t ors in making the selections which f orm t his volume .
3uch a book has a two-fold purpose at the very lea st; one
i s to s e r ve as a n introduction to forma l Arabic prose which
is neithe r journalis tic nor expository on the one hand, nor
poe tic on the other. 1Jith the help of the Glossary , grammatical
no t es and idioms, the student should be able to
find his way into the rnading of texts of this type through
t he use of this Reader. The othe r purpose should be to
introduce the student to a particular genre, to acquaint
him with some of the writer's views toward it, and to
familiarize him with some of the more important and representative
practitioners of the art of novel and short-story
writing . This is a difficult task if only because of the
temptation to include too many authors and to us e the same
piece by an author which a lready appears in the few ant hologies
in existence, Much thought was given to t he choice
of the s elections presented here. 1•. /e would like t o note,
however, that it ha s not been our a im to include only the
best writers nor even, necessarily, the best work by such
writers. Our aim i n the compila t ion of t his, our first
Reader, was to create a useful guide which fulfills the two
purposes outlined above.
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