Lebanese literature has had significant interactions with Western literature for many years. Undoubtedly, these interactions have reached their highest level in the modern period in particular, during which many Lebanese writers were influenced by Western writers and their works and reflected these interactions in their works. The first literary genre to have emerged in Lebanese literature can be said to have been the story. The biggest reason why Lebanese writers took up this genre (i.e. the story), about which they did not know much at that time, was that they were able to handle story writing in a shorter time and with less difficultly than the novel genre. After World War II, the story genre showed more serious developments in Lebanon. Undoubtedly, the fact that Lebanese writers who’d immigrated to Egypt translated and quoted from Western literary genres had affected this. These writers became influential in this field by publishing articles in Egypt’s important magazines and newspapers in the following periods. The story genre was first discussed by writers such as Salim Al Bustani, Maroun Abboud, and Tawfiq Yusuf ‘Awwad and formed a basis for the novel genre in the periods that followed, during which many writers made significant progress in Lebanese novel writing with their works and reached the peak of the period. The most important of these writers are Halil Taqiyuddin and Karam Mulhem Karam, who tried to revive the spirit of the novel in Lebanon by saving it from a classical style and subject matter. In the 1930s, a new novelistic movement emerged thanks to the magazine Al-Makshuf. The most important representative of this movement is Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad, who set the example for the social realist novel, and he was followed by Maroun Abboud. Another important development in Lebanese novel writing involved the works of writers such as Gibran Khalil Gibran and Mikhail Naimy, who’d immigrated to other countries. Gibran Khalil Gibran took the first step in this regard with his novel al-Ajniha al-Mutakassira [The Broken Wings], followed by Mikhail Naimy with Liqa [Till We Meet], published in New York. Next came Suhayl Idris, followed immediately after by two female writers, Layla Balabakki and Layla Ussayran. Later on during the wars that broke out in Lebanon, female writers such as Hoda Barakat and Emily Nasrallah, who despite discussing women’s rights as a subject in their works, also dealt with the subject of war and made valuable contributions to the field of novels.

Another female writer who has an important place in contemporary Lebanese literature is Widad Sakakini, who appeared on the literary scene as a novelist, critic, and short story writer in the 1950s. When she married poet and doctor Zaki Mahasin (1909-1972) in 1934, she went to Damascus with him. Later, when Zaki al-Mahasini was appointed as cultural attaché at the Syrian Embassy in 1946, Widad Sakakini accompanied him to Cairo where she lived for 11 years. As time progressed, Widad Sakakini realized that her husband’s tendencies were aligned with her own and that this would contribute to her being able to continue her intellectual efforts with patience and courage. She witnessed the writers and cultural forms of Cairo closely. She also completed her master’s degree at Cairo University and received her doctorate degree at the Faculty of Letters with her thesis titled “War Poetry in Arabic Literature”.

This period of her stay in Egypt contributed to Widad Sakakini’s intellectual development and opened a wide range of opportunities for her to meet contemporary Egyptian literary life. She witnessed seminars, conferences and festivals that were held for great intellectual and literary figures, both Egyptians and foreigners. Thanks to all this knowledge and experience she gained, she did her best as a writer to help Lebanese literature gain a place among world literature, and she succeeded. Thus, she became the director of her own literature and positioned herself between the literatures of the two countries, blending the two as best she could.

Widad Sakakini started her creativity in the literary field with short stories but soon switched to different genres, in which she became successful. She differed from others with her deep-rooted culture, deep emotion, self-truth, and life of rich experiences. The effects from her ability for literary criticism as a creative writer are clearly seen in the many strong critical articles she had published in newspapers, in which she paid great attention to weaving her sentences with an understandable, clear, eloquent, and sharp language. The eloquent use of her prose and the psychology with which she described the events in her stories also further perfected the understandability of her works.

Widad Sakakini always had a thoughtful and caring attitude toward women and argued that women’s rightful place in society could only be achieved by actively working to improve society. For this reason, she took care to include most of the heroes in her novels as women and did not hesitate to psychologically analyze them.

Widad Sakakini went to Egypt and published her book Al-Hatarat to continue her literary career there. To say that she undoubtedly started her literary career as a short story writer would be fair, as well as being considered a pioneer in the field of women’s short stories.

Sakakini wrote five story selections between 1945-1978 and crowned her writing career with the story collection Bayn ai-Nil wa-l-nakhil [Between the Nile and the Palm Tree] (Cairo 1947), in addition to her other story collections Maraya al-nas [People’s Mirrors] (Cairo 1945), al-Sitar al-marfu [The Raised Curtain] (Cairo 1955), Nufus tatakallmn [Souls Speak] (Cairo 1962), and Aqwa min al-sinin [Stronger Than the Years] (Damascus 1978). The author had also written the historical novel named Arwa bint al-khutub [Arwa, Daughter of Woe] (Cairo 1949), in which she started to present all the events in a realistic style without going overboard with coincidences, exaggerations, or adventures that spoil the aesthetics of the novel. Instead, she managed it in a traditional language, making the work a subject close to optimism.

Sakakini published her second novel al-Hubb al-muharrem [Forbidden Love] in 1947, in which she deals with the issue of foster siblings and how two lovers who are foster siblings are prevented from getting married. Although the author mostly used a language that bears the characteristics of the decadent period, this novel has a fixed level of meaning. However, this novel is also noticed to have the signs of a vital language that embodies a depth of worlds with all their contradictions between the soul’s desires and moral tendencies. Maraya al-nas [People’s Mirrors] is a collection of Damascus stories Widad Sakakini published in Cairo in 1945. The author became the first Lebanese storyteller in this field to reveal this type of color and texture in her works.