الفهرس 
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Abstract
This research is designed to examine and evaluate the impact of oil discovery and the immeasurable wealth it has generated on the social, psychological, cultural, economic, and political life of the Arabian Peninsula not only from an Arab point of view, but also from a Western perspective. For such a purpose, the dissertation provides close readings of three selected novels: Cities of Salt by Abdelrahman Munif, In the Kingdom of Men by Kim Barnes, and The Ruins of Us by Keija Parssinen which expound through events and characters the impact of oil discovery on the Arabian Peninsula in particular and on all Arab countries in general. Moreover, the study sheds thick light upon the Arab/American relationship especially after the establishment of the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) and the arrival of the Americans in the Arabian desert to search for and produce oil.
Since this study deals with one of the Middle East countries in its relationship to the West, a postcolonial reading of the three chosen novels is adopted as a theoretical background in discussing and analyzing the various aspects of the three representative novels. In the light of the postcolonial theory, the research tackles the East/West relationship; a relationship that is based on exploitation, oppression, and superiority of the West.
The detailed analysis of Munif’s Cities of Salt, Barnes’In the Kingdom of Men, and Parssinen’s The Ruins of Us proves that oil wealth is a double-edged weapon. In spite of the outward modernity and material prosperity that oil discovery provides people with, it has generated negative impacts such as the environmental ruin, Americanization, corporate colonialism, cultural collision, and loss of Arab identity; a pile of problems one can never easily escape or ignore.