Abstract
This article aims to analyse the 1960s literary avant‐garde in Egypt, drawing various parallels with critical analysis of avant‐garde activity in Europe and the United States. It begins by explaining the use of the term avant‐garde in its generic rather than historically specific sense and its basic social preconditions. It then discusses the role of the journal as an effective medium for avant‐garde experimentation and explores why sixties Egypt saw such a strong avant‐garde assertion, especially in the journal Gallery 68 (Gâlîrî 68). The short story genre—as the hub of sixties experimentation—is the focus of the subsequent analysis in which a selection of broad trends exemplifying the new literary sensibility is sketched out.1 Finally, the article investigates the role of the avant‐garde in relation to the future.