The People of the Cave

Author's name: Tawfiq Al-Hakim Publisher: Al-Shorouk for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2004 Literary classification: Dramatic literature Book overview: "People of the Cave" was the first "artistic" play inspired by religious stories in theatrical drama, in which Tawfiq Al-Hakim addressed the problem of time and its meaning in relation to humans and civilizations, and posed his eternal philosophical question: Is it possible for humans to resist time with all its repercussions, its frenzy, dominance, and predetermined course? And with this, he brought dramatic literature into the circle of public awareness as a branch of Arabic literature. And in this, the great writer Bahaa Taher said: "People of the Cave" was an entry for an entire generation into the art of drama. A generation that knew drama through reading before experiencing it on the theater stage. In the 1940s and early 1950s, there was no real theatrical life. These beautiful literary pieces ignited our imagination as noble models of a lost art. And Al-Hakim says about his play: "I said in this play that these people of the cave are saints, indeed, but they should not live with us. We should place them in a respected cave that we venerate and to which we pilgrimage, but we cannot leave them to corrupt the present. I imagine the people of the cave, having left them to live in the present after more than three hundred years of absence, each of them will, of course, try to return to his old craft and his ancient ideas."