“The Nubian-Egyptian Novel: The Quest for Identity in the works of Idris Ali” Egyptian Nubian author Idris Ali announced a new genre by labeling his first novel Dongola “a Nubian novel.” In this and his subsequent works, Ali gave this new genre its distinct form: a bildungsroman for the displaced Nubian minority for whom education only exacerbates marginality. Among the populations that have been rendered “victims of the map” of the modern Middle East, few have lost as much or received as little attention as the Nubians caught between Egypt and Sudan. Egyptian author Idris Ali, who lived much of his life in obscurity and poverty, captured in his novels the frustration of the Nubian community denied a place in the official nationalism of independent Egypt, and unable to forge its own national identity in the shadow of that Egyptian nationalism. This paper examines how Ali depicts the contradictory process of identity formation experienced by Nubians growing up under Egyptian state nationalism as the heart of a distinct, if small, genre developed over his novels Dongola, Beneath the Poverty Line and Above Nuba Mountains. It will apply a theoretical perspective based on Benedict Anderson’s theory of post-colonial nationalism, in particular, the distinctive grammar of emerging state nationalism, as a means of viewing the process of marginalization that the grammar of Egyptian nationalism forced upon minority populations like the Nubians. Anderson’s paradigm fits well with the clash of Egyptian and Nubian national identity that Ali depicts in his novels. The paper will conclude with a discussion of how the 2011 revolution changed the conditions of marginalization depicted in Ali’s novels.