Roger Allen

Roger Allen retired in 2011 from his position as the Sascha Jane Patterson Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He was Professor of Arabic and Comparative Lierature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations. In 2009-10 he served as President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA).

Among his published works are: A Period of Time (1st [microfiche] edition, 1974; 2nd edition 1992); The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction (1st edition 1982, Arabic edition, 1986; 2nd edition 1995, 2nd Arabic edition 1998); and The Arabic Literary Heritage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 (abbreviated paperback edition [2000] Introduction to Arabic Literature; in Arabic, Muqaddima li-al-adab al-`Arabi, Cairo: Al-Majlis al-A`la, 2003)..

In addition to a large number of studies in book, encyclopedia and article form on modern and pre-modern Arabic literature, he has translated fictional works by a number of Arab writers, including Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, `Abd al-rahman Munif, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Hanan al-Shaykh, Salim Himmich and Ahmad al-Tawfiq.