Jonathan Smolin, The Politics of Melodrama: The Cultural and Political Lives of Ihsan Abdel Kouddous and Gamal Abdel Nasser (New Texts Out Now)

I wrote The Politics of Melodrama after realizing that Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s wildly popular romantic serials operated on two levels. At first glance, they were cliff‑hangers that boosted the circulation of Rose El Youssef, the seminal weekly magazine that Abdel Kouddous edited.