Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein the playwright Tawfik alHakim the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour andof courseNaguib Mahfouz Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who midway through the last century under the influence of Western literature began to practice genres of creative writing that were new to the traditions of classical Arabic. In the first story in this volume the very short Story in the Form of a Petition Yahya Hakki demonstrates his ease with gentle humor a form rare in Arabic writing. In the following two stories Mother of the Destitute and A Story from Prison he describes with typical sympathy individuals who less privileged than others somehow manage to scrape through lifes hardships.