Paris-educated Egyptian writers sought to Egyptianize literature while retaining French cultural reference points

Evidence

Taymür always kept one eye on French culture; the eye he turned to Egyptian literature and drama searched for authenticity. Taymür felt strongly a need for “Egyptianizing” the literature of his country and creating a school of writing that was uniquely Egyptian. In this quest for realism,Taymür developed a dialogue with his readers in which he encouraged them to nod knowingly with him about the social “types” he presented in his stories while, at the same time, he challenged them to see themselves in much of the pettiness and snobbery his narrator recounted. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 942

Categorization

• XREF: The doubled cultural identity (European-loyal artist idealizing Egypt from abroad) parallels Fanon’s and other postcolonial theorists’ account of the colonized intellectual’s split consciousness — fits the reader’s broader African coloniality frame.