Abstract

This article investigates the city paradigm in the Arabic novel through the lens of cultural studies, examining the urban space not merely as a geographical setting but as a cultural text, a symbolic schema, and an expression of modern Arab consciousness. Drawing on selected case studies ranging from Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo to Hanan Al-Shaykh's Beirut, and from Elias Khoury's post-war urban ruins to Halim Barakat's discourse on exile and displacement, the study traces the evolution of urban narrative in twentieth and twenty-first century Arabic fiction. The article argues that the city in the Arabic novel functions simultaneously as a site where postcolonial identity is negotiated, as a legal-mnemonic space where collective memory is preserved, and as a symbolic argument through which the fragmentation aesthetics of postmodernity are made manifest. Grounded in Henri Lefebvre's spatial theory, Edward Said's postcolonial cultural criticism, and Gaston Bachelard's phenomenological approach to space, this research offers a culturally anthropological contribution to Arabic literary studies.