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.

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

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