The City as Narrative Agent: Literary Form and Urban Trauma in the Arab World

Abstract

This study examines how contemporary Arabic fiction transforms the cities of Sana’a, Beirut, and Baghdad from inert settings into powerful narrative agents, mapping their distinct historical traumas onto specific narrative forms. It argues that these literary modes function as essential strategies for cultural survival. In the face of  slow collapse and cultural erasure, Sana’a is preserved through an elegiac magical realism that anchors its identity in ancient stones and mythical memory. Beirut, shattered by civil war, is reassembled via fragmented postmodern testimony, its disjointed narrative mirroring a divided soul and contested history. Baghdad, subjected to the absurdity of invasion, is rendered through dystopian allegory, transforming the city into a laboratory of monstrous creation. Through comparative analysis, this paper reveals these aesthetic choices to be direct formal responses to urban catastrophe. The “novel of the city” thus emerges as a critical literary practice that transforms writing into an act of cultural preservation, ensuring the persistence of urban memory against material ruin.