Samah Selim is Associate Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985 (2004).

Chapter 1: Introduction.

Chapter 2: Bad Books for Bad Readers.

Chapter 3: The People's Entertainments.

Chapter 4: The Things of the Time: Cairo at the Turn of the Century.

Chapter 5: New Women and Novel Characters.

Chapter 6: Fiction and Colonial Identities.

Chapter 7: Pharaoh's Revenge.

Chapter 8: The Mysteries of Cairo.