The Arabic novel has undergone major changes in the last two decades, not only in terms of theme, setting, characterization and literary technique, but also in the range of authors, the variety of represented outlooks, the social and cultural backgrounds of these writers and their distinct understandings of reality and narrative. These changes constitute a radical departure from the established norms and conventions of narrative discourse and present an alarming insight into Arabic culture and psyche, even if they have yet to be subjected to detailed critical scrutiny. The aims of this paper are first to introduce the work of the new wave of young Arab novelists who started publishing in the 1990s and have subsequently become widely known among Arab literary circles as the 1990s generation. Secondly, to outline the context in which they emerged, articulate their vision and consider the changes their cumulative work has introduced into Arabic narrative discourse. Finally, it will identify whether these young writers represent an epistemological or an aesthetic break with previous traditional narrative discourse, and if so, locate this break within the socio-cultural context from which it emerged. The paper deals with a set of homologies, on the one hand there is the new writings and its poetics of a closed horizon, and on the other there are the global changes in which their world, the Arab world at large, is increasingly marginalised; the socio-economic changes, the cultural changes, and the position of those young writers in their culture, and more importantly in the geographical space they occupy. The arrival of the new generation of writers on the cultural scene coincided with major changes to the city of Cairo, and this change left its indelible mark on the novel of the 1990s. In this respect, the paper studies the interaction between the urban changes that took place in Cairo in the last four decades, the kind of 'self' that this change produced, and the transformation of the new texts which emerged from this changing city.