Tayeb Salih (1929–2009)

This was a book that left me swirling with many thoughts, and it took me a while to process how I felt about it. The writing was rich and transporting, but it was also not a "fun hang" in that it did not seem, as a book, very kind to women. Of course, the world wasn't and isn't very kind to women much of the time (whether in high society Europe or rural North Africa), so perhaps that is only one way in which the book is honest, but it still makes me weary to read it one more time.

The book is Serious and has Important Themes and the writing is so lovely in places, but also I am just tired.… (más)

Dust rose up behind us, and I watched the bedouin running towards some tattered tents by some bushes southwards of us, where there were diminutive sheep and naked children. Where, O God, is the shade? Such land brings forth nothing but prophets. This drought can be cured only by the sky.

After studying in Europe and having taken a civil servant job in Khartoum, a man returns to his home village on a bend in the Nile only a few times a year. On one visit, he is astonished to meet another English-speaking man and is unsure of what to make of a Western-educated man living in a farming village where traditions remain unchanging and education is rare. Mustafa later shares his story, a remarkable one, with the narrator.

This was a remarkable book. Originally published in 1966, it holds many insights about the effects of colonialism that remain relevant today. The narrator allows the customs and traditions of his birthplace commit an injustice, with repercussions that shock everyone. There's a lot going on in this slim novel set in an obscure corner of Sudan and I'm glad to have read it.

The war ended in victory for us all: the stones, the trees, the animals, the iron, while I, lying under this beautiful, compassionate sky, feel that we are all brothers; he who drinks and he who prays and he who steals and he who commits adultery and he who fights and he who kills. The source is the same. No one knows what goes on in the mind of the Divine. Perhaps he doesn't care. Perhaps he is not angry.… (más)