Major cities throughout the Arab world have been undergoing a plethora of unprecedented social transformations in the last century. These transformations have often been drowned out by the constant stream of sensationalist political headlines flooding newspapers and screens outside of the region which have captured the attention, as well as attracted the scrutiny, of Western academia. Although the transformations of Arab countries and cities have been pinned (and, at times, reduced) to key political events, such as the series of uprisings known as the Arab Spring, these ran alongside and were locked in an interdependent relationship with significant social and cultural metamorphoses that are just as key to understanding and analysing change in the region. Rather than in headlines, these social transformations have been meticulously documented and commented on in literature such as novels produced by Arab writers from within the Arab world, and from within these cities-in transformation themselves.