This book explores the complex relationship between the novel and identity in modern Arab culture against a backdrop of contemporary Egypt. It uses the example of the Egyptian novel to interrogate the root causes - religious, social, political, and psychological - of the lingering identity crisis that has afflicted Arab culture for at least two centuries.

Muhammad Siddiq is Associate Professor at the Department for Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA.

1. A Genre at War: Literary Form and Historical Agency 2. Tangents of Identity: The Poetics of Space in the Egyptian Novel 3. Divining Identities: Religion and the Egyptian Novel 4. Questionable Subjects: Individuality, Representation, and the Novel