Sayyid Qutb

No Arab historical figure is more demonized than the Egyptian literati-turned-Islamist Sayyid Qutb. In a sharp departure from this common narrative, Sabaseviciute offers a fresh perspective on Qutb's life that examines his Islamist commitment as a continuation of his literary project. A poet and literary critic in his youth, Qutb is known to have abandoned literature in the 1950s in favor of Islamism, becoming its most prominent ideologist to this day.

Drawing upon unexplored material on Qutb's life--book reviews, criticism, intellectual collaborations, memoirs, and personal interviews with his former Contrary to the notion of Islam's incompatibility with literature, the book argues that Islamism provided as Qutb with a novel way to pursue his metaphysical quest at a time when the rising anti-colonial movement brought the Romantic models of literature to their demise.