Acknowledgments -- Preface: Islam in Literary Production -- Chapter 1: Roads Not Taken: Arab Modernity and the Loose Ties with the Street -- Chapter 2: Before Bidding Farewell: What Do Narratives of Education Say? -- Duktūr Ibrāhīm (1939) -- Yaḥyā Ḥaqqī's Qindīl Umm Hāshim -- Writing Ibn Taymiyyah: Sharqāwī's Difficult Choice in Literary Biography -- Chapter 3: The Religious Dynamic -- Recruitments in a Political Vacuum: Maḥfūẓ's Layālī Alf Laylah: Arabian Nights and Days -- ‛Alā' al-Aswānī: 'Imārat Ya ‛qūbian (The Yacoubian Building) -- Chapter 4: Mass Culture Narratives -- ‛Abd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim: The Seven Days of Man -- The Politics/Poetics of Contemporary Islamic Popular Narrative: The Case of Najīb Maḥfūẓ's The Epic of the Ḥarāfīsh -- Chapter 5: In the Aftermath of Failures: The Reliance on Popular Religious Politics -- The Global, the National, and Islamic Faith in Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī's Zaynī Barakāt -- ῾Abd al-Ḥakīm Qāsim's Al-Mahdī -- Which Door to an Enclave? Najīb Maḥfūẓ's al-Liṣṣ wa al-Kilāb: The Thief and the Dogs -- Chapter 6: The Search for Islam -- Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm's Bird of the East and the Door to Faith -- The Shrine of Atia: A Novella by Salwā Bakr -- Najīb Maḥfūẓ, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma -- Chapter 7: The Bifurcated Poetic: Islam as Poetry -- What Might or Might Not Come -- Conclusion -- Works Cited -- About the Author.