"From salt, history is written without being a book in history." - Faisal Darraj "In the novel, there is an epic salt that I know of in no other novelist. It reminds me of the great novels written in the West in the first half of this century." - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra "If I were asked to choose the best five books published in English in 1988, I would choose Cities of Salt as one of them." - Michael Abshire – American novelist "Cities of Salt, with its content, scope, style, narrative perspective, and technique, follows the high traditions of fiction." - Mohammed Siddiq "A work that reminds us of One Hundred Years of Solitude in its weaving of mystical ambiguity, its reliance on mythology and folklore, and its suggestive symbolism." - Chicago Tribune "Brilliant... the only serious fictional work dealing with the impact of oil, Americans, and local rulers in a Gulf country." - Edward Said "Cities of Salt, this novel is one of the most important and dangerous Arabic novels. If not the most important and dangerous of all." - Farouk Abdel Qader Cities of Salt is an Arabic novel by the Saudi novelist Abdul Rahman Munif, considered one of the most famous Arabic novels, and it consists of five parts. The novel depicts life at the beginning of the oil discovery and the rapid transformations that befell the cities and villages of the Arabian Peninsula due to the discovery of oil. It represents a qualitative leap in historical narration and personal historiography of an era where many of the new generation find an incomplete picture, lost in the description of the post-stage or the present in a rosy but also incomplete manner. Cities of Salt is an important document that speaks and chronicles the civilizing winds that swept over nomadic life, undoubtedly affecting Bedouin life. The author accurately observed Bedouin life and expressed what was churning in the hearts of many Bedouins and their transformation into sudden wealth and the resulting effects.