In what ways did the promise of Pan-Arabism provide possibilities for moving beyond the limits of the nation-state? What are the ways in which different understandings of spatial configurations can challenge the inequalities and shortcomings of the nation-state? Is this a failed dream to be buried and forgotten or a possibility to be resurrected and resuscitated once again? This paper explores these questions through a reading of Baha' Taher's novel al-Hubb fil-manfa (Love in Exile, 1995), exploring the ways in which the literary form of the novel continues to be one of the foremost genres for the articulation of such questions. Taher sets up a world where his characters, the multiple exiles of the novel, come together in a space that is not specified nationally. In this world there seems to be a moment where alternative forms of community are possible, where dreams of different collectivities exist, and where the rigidity of the category of the national is temporarily unsettled. This paper will also explore the ways in which a writer like Taher is able to manipulate the form of what was once regarded as the national genre par excellencee How does Taher play on the idea of the social realist novel as a way of questioning the national entity with which it was so intimately tiedt In merging the fictive and the real, the novel and journalistic production, Taher raises questions not only about the possibility of representation but also about the role of the writer in the contemporary context.