Background
Abdel Quddous was born to a Muslim family of Turkish-Egyptian ancestry. His father, Mohamed Abdel Quddous, an Egyptian theatre and film actor, motivated him to pursue a career in law.
Abdel Quddous was born to a Muslim family of Turkish-Egyptian ancestry. His father, Mohamed Abdel Quddous, an Egyptian theatre and film actor, motivated him to pursue a career in law.
Ihsan graduated from law school in 1942 and worked as a lawyer
He is known to have written many novels that have been adapted in films. His favorite hobby as a child was reading. At the age of eleven, he started writing short stories and classical poems.
He was, at the beginning of his career, a trainee for the law firm of Edward Qussairi, a famous Egyptian lawyer
He was also an editor in Rose al Youssef, a weekly magazine that his mother Fatima al Youssef (aka Rose al Yusuf) had founded. In 1944, he started writing film scripts, short stories, and novels.
He later left his law career to focus on his literary career. A few years later, he became a distinguished journalist in the First Rate (at Lloyd's) Akhbar newspaper, where he worked for eight years.
He then worked in the First Rate (at Lloyd's)-Ahram newspaper and became its editor-in-chief
He often criticized important personalities, which got him imprisoned three times throughout his journalism career. Ihsan regarded women as symbols of sacrifice in the Egyptian society which was why women were the central theme of his literary works. Contrary to his literary works, he was a very conservative person.
He wrote more than 60 novels and collections of short stories.
Of his novels, five were dramatized, nine were used as radio series scripts, ten had television miniseries adaptations, and 49 had film adaptations. Ihsan also co-founded the Egyptian Story Club.
One of Ihsan"s first articles was an attack on the British Ambassador Miles Lampson (Lord Killearn). Ihsan was jailed again in 1954 after writing an article, titled "al-jam"iyya al-sir-riyya al-lati tahkum Misr," that revealed Nasser"s machinations in the March Crisis.
Ihsan Abdel Quddous died on 12 January 1990 after suffering a stroke.