Abdel Rahman El-Abnudi

Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi (Arabic: عبد الرحمن الأبنودي, romanized: ʻAbd ir-Raḥmān il-Abnūdī, 11 April 1938 – 21 April 2015) was a popular Egyptian poet, and later a children's books writer. He was one of a generation of poets who favored to write their work in the Egyptian dialect (in Abnudi's case, Upper Egyptian dialect) rather than Standard Arabic, the formal language of the state. This literary stance was associated with a militant political engagement: Abnudi and other Egyptian writers of this school sought to make their literary production part of the process of political development and movement towards popular democracy in Egypt.