Abstract
Unlike many other alternative views of the past, historical novels, which reflect the individual and social life of people in turbulent world, can provide a key to historical understanding. In particular, it is expected that the successful historical novels describe almost ordinary stories of particular nation in a subtle way, ensuring their readers to the historical continuity. Taking famous Egyptian writer Salah Maaty's historical novel ‘Hizanat Shamail’ (2002) as a case study, this article explores famous Egyptian writer Salah Maaty's an important contribution to the development of a modern Arabic novelistic discourse and to the secular intellectual awakening of the Arabs, raising a lot of difficult issues and asking to fundamental questions of life. By analyzing Salah Maaty's successful historical novel, this study determines political, social and psychological features of the novel. Results of the study also describe some idealized features of the Arabic national identity.