This book is about relations between literature, society and politics in the Arab world. It is an attempt to come to terms with the changing conceptualizations of the political in Arabic literature in recent modern history. It examines historical and contemporary conceptions of literary commitment (iltizām) and how notions of ‘writing with a cause’ have been shaped, contested, re-actualized since the 1940s until today. Against the backdrop of the current social and political transformations in the Arab world, questions on the role of the arts, specifically literature and its politics, arise with immediacy and require profound reflection and analysis.