Long before the eruption of protests across the Arab world in 2012, writers and intellectuals have been engaged in various forms of opposition and dissent. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the hopes then the disappointments of the anti-colonial nationalist projects in the Arab world. In what ways can narrative unsettle official nationalist discourse? How can it imagine other forms of identification and alternative spaces of belonging? This paper examines such questions with a focus upon the Egyptian context in the post-revolutionary period. Through a reading of the work of novelist and short story writer Muhammad al-Bisati (1937-2012), I explore his use of magical realism, as a means to question the dominance of earlier social realist narratives and the ideas of the nation-state which they supported. In framing this paper I use the distinction made by Christopher Warnes between “faith-based magical realism,” which requires that readers believe the unbelievable, and “irreverent magical realism,” which engages with actual, literary, cultural, or historical discourses. The work of al-Bisati brings together both types, blurring the lines between reality and fiction; questioning linearity as a reliable structuring device; and foregrounding multiple, polyphonic voices, often those from the margins. Story-telling itself thus becomes a form of dissent. This paper also interrogates magical realism as an aesthetics of dissent, and foregrounds the need to connect these narrative strategies both to magical realism in Latin America, Africa, and elsewhere, and also to the Arabic story telling traditions. Central to this examination is also the relationship between aesthetics, opposition, and prominence. As a significant member of the sixties generation in Egypt, al-Bisati was heavily invested in the role of the intellectual and the relationship between aesthetics and dissent. Perhaps most interesting is that although he was drawn to magical realism (a sub-genre that is not prolific in Egyptian literature) early in his career, he abandoned it quickly, only to return to it as an established writer. It is striking that Over the Bridge (2004), a novel that is more overtly political in as far as it can be seen as reflecting 1960s Egypt, has received more attention, and has already been translated into English. The Merchant and the Painter (1976) a more elusive text, that is less obviously political, remains virtually undiscussed. In examining both his literary works, and his literary career, this paper explores questions of aesthetics, politics, and eminence in the Egyptian cultural field.