Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
Abû al-Qâsim al-Shâbbî is one of the most attractive literary figures of twentieth- century North Africa, and probably the only Maghribi author of the modern period so far to attain the stature of greatness in the Arab world. His talent was first appreciated in Cairo in the thirties by the editors of Apollo magazine, and today literary men in all Arabic-speaking lands admire his verse.At the 1966 festival held in his memory in Tunis, critics and litterateurs from Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Iraq read papers and recited poems expressing their appreciation of this treasured child of the Tunisian desert.