Man emancipating from his fetters acquires ways to express his individuality by the invention of the printing press and the printed book. The way is open for the birth of that free form of expression which is the novel. Cities are not only scenes for plots of novels. In various novels cities, from backgrounds become protagonists. At the same time cities grow and change.
Novels relate the changes cities go through, revive what can no longer be lived.
Their descriptions are often only fragments of the composite wholes cities are with their many different parts. The narrative component tries to offer a view of the whole by connecting the fragments among them. But no novel can ever present all possible visions. There are ever more separate descriptions. Cities no longer are single books but multiplicities of books.