official literary discourse. Both the narrators and the protagonists of this new genre find themselves in a state of disorientation, trapped within a duplicitous, illogical order. The words at their disposal are no more coherent than their worlds. Cities and scribes Intermediations between literary forms and social realities are necessarily subtle, indirect and complex. To suggest a series of homologies between the narrative strategies of the Egyptian novel and Cairo's changing urban fabric is not, of course, to posit any one-to-one correspondence between them. Yet it is possible to trace an evolving relationship between the modernizing project inaugurated from the 1870s by the Khedive Isma'il, who had been a student in Paris during Haussmann's re-engineering of the French capital, and the development of the modern Egyptian novel. Isma'il planned and built a new city of wide boulevards and great open thoroughfares, the Opera House and Azbakiyya Park, situated to the north and west of the ancient medina or oriental city, which for thirteen centuries had developed by the slow process of in-building; the old Khalij al-Misry Street forming the boundary between the two. The two cities represented distinct world views and modes of operation, the densely populated medina retaining its traditional order and conservative-religious outlook, while the 'second city' proclaimed its rulers' faith in ideas of progress, modernity and reason. This was also the vision of Rifa'ah al-Tahtawi and his students, who were deeply influenced by the French Enlightenment. It continued to inform the work of the great modern Egyptian