This research represents an attempt to study the relationship between narration, history and collective memory. The first section explores the transformations which have occurred in the concepts of history and literature since the second half of the last century, which have led to transcending the previous perspectives based on the separation of these two fields. It also discusses the importance of literature in general, and of the novel in particular, in the process of memory representation. The second section is examines the contribution of the contemporary Arab novel to the narrative representation of collective memory, through the novel Ibnat Bonaparte Al Missryah, the historical and imaginative events and characters of which recall a painful time.