This article analyses three Arabic novels by prominent Tunisian women writers published in the decade preceding the mass protests of 2010: Mas'udah Abu Bakr's urshqanah (1999), Fa ilah Al-Shabbi's al-'Adl (Justice, 2005), and Fat iyah al-Hashimi's Maryam tasqu min yad Allah (Maryam Falls from the Hand of God, 2009). These novels are interpreted as alternative pol...