Three Arabic Novels of Expatriation in the Arabian Gulf Region: Ibrāhīm Naṣrallāh’s "Prairies of Fever", Ibrāhīm ʿAbdalmagīd’s "The Other Place", and Saʿūd al-Sanʿūsī’s "Bamboo Stalk"

Once oil revenues started pouring in the Gulf region by the 1950s, many Arab citizens from Egypt and the Levant moved there for work. A number of Arab novels have delineated the expatriation experience and highlighted the discrepancy between the expats’ expectations of brotherhood, which emanated from their belief in the dominant pan-Arab ideology, and the reality of existence in societies that had social configura-tions that did not necessarily privilege Arab expats. This paper explores the perceived gap in the socio-political projects of the Gulf countries on the one hand, and the Levant and Egypt on the other. By compar-ing two novels by two Arab expat writers, Ibrāhīm Naṣrallāh’s Prairies of Fever and Ibrāhīm ʿAbdal-magīd’s The Other Place with a novel by a Gulf writer, Saʿūd al-Sanʿūsī’s Bamboo Stalk, this article argues that despite the pre- and postcolonial forces that have shaped Gulf Societies into a different cultural region, the project that Gulf novels engage in is similar to the rest of the Arab World, namely, nation state building, with increasing awareness of hyphenated identities and subaltern people.Key Words: Arabic Fiction, Arabian Gulf Writers, Realism, Nationalism, The Bamboo Stalk, Prairies of Fever, The Other Place.