In this blog post, I will present a translation of Taha Husayn’s review of Mahmud al-Mas’adi’s play al-Sudd (The Dam), first published the newspaper al-Jumhuriyya on February 27, 1957. This review, which remains widely circulated in Tunisia, and is often invoked as proof of Mas’adi’s great stature as a writer, has never been translated into English before. In the next two blog posts, I will also present translations of Mas’adi’s response to the review and Taha Husayn’s response to Mas’adi’s response; likewise, these have never been translated into English before.