Season of Migration to the North

Season of Migration to the North

infobox Book |
name = Season of Migration to the North
title_orig = موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال
"ArabDIN|Mawsim al-Hiǧra ilā ash-Shamāl"
translator =


image_caption =
author = Al-Tayyib Salih
cover_artist =
country =
language = Arabic
series =
genre =
publisher = Al-Tayyib Salih
release_date = 1966
media_type =
pages =
isbn = ISBN 0-435-90630-5
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"Season of Migration to the North" (Arabic: موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال" ArabDIN|Mawsim al-Hiǧra ilā ash-Shamāl" ) is a classic post-colonial Sudanese novel by Al-Tayyib Salih. Originally published in Arabic in 1966, it has since been translated into English and French.

ummary

The novel charts individuation of the (un-named) narrator, who has returned to his native village in the Sudan having spent seven years in England furthering his education.

On his arrival home, he encounters a new villager ("Mustafa Sa'eed") who exhibits none of the adulation for his achievements that most others do, and displays an antagonistically aloof nature. The villager betrays his past one drunken evening by wistfully reciting poetry in fluent English, leaving the narrator resolute to discover the stranger's identity. As it turns out Mustafa was also a precocious student educated in the west but simultaneously harbors a violently hateful and complex relationship with his western identity and acquaintances. The story of Mustafa's troubled past in Europe and in particular his love affair with a British woman, forms the center of the novel. What the narrator then discovers about the stranger, Mustafa Sa'eed, awakens in him great curiosity, despair and anger, as Mustafa emerges as his doppelganger. The stories of Mustafa's past life in England, and the repercussions on the village around him, take a toll on the narrator, who is driven to the very edge of sanity. It is only finally, floating in the river Nile, precariously between life and death, that the narrator makes the conscious choice to rid himself of Mustafa's lingering presence, and to stand as an influential individual in his own right.

Controversy

The novel was banned in the author's native Sudan for a period of time. This may have something to do with the second half of the novel, which contains some graphic sexual imagery, not meshing well with the Islamic government in Sudan.

Editions in print

*ISBN 0-435-90630-5 "Season of Migration to the North", 1969 Heinemann
*ISBN 0-935576-29-0 "Season of Migration to the North" (hardcover), 1989 M. Kesend Pub. Ltd.
*ISBN 0-435-90066-8 "Season of Migration to the North" (paperback), 1970 Heinemann
*ISBN 0-89410-199-4 "Season of Migration to the North: A novel" (paperback reprint), 1980 Lynne Rienner Publishers
*ISBN 0-14-118720-4 "Season of Migration to the North", 2003 Penguin Classics Series

External links

* [http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/?lab=SeasonReview review] by Marina Harss at Words Without Borders


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