Explores the work of novelists including Naguib Mahfouz, 'Abd al-Khaliq al-Rikabi, Jamal al-Ghitani, Ben Salem Himmich, Ali Mubarak, Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani to show how the development of the Arabic novel has created a politics of nostalgia which can be traced to discourses on aesthetics, ethics and politics.