Season of migration to the north

This new edition of the English translation of Tayeb Salih's novel nearly two decades after its first publication in Heinemann's "Arab Authors" series is testimony to the reputation it has since acquired among English-speaking readers. As the fine new introduction by translator Denys Jonhnson-Davies indicates, Season has become a regular addition to the world literature survey courses of many colleges. A compelling story of the recent history of the East/West cultural conflict, Salih's novel tells the tale of the encounter of two Sudanese men who, in different generations, have gone abroad to be educated in England. Their meeting, however, occurs afterwards in a village at a bend in the Nile, and their separate but reciprocating narratives, told partly in flashbacks and through literary references to Othello and the Arabian Nights, among others, disclose much of the cultural and social controversy, from sexual mores to political differences, that has attended the history of colonialism and independence. Season is a complexly structured narrative whose powerful details of life in the Sudan and England emphasize the characters' intense violent struggles with themselves and their societies. Salih's novel, already a classic in its own right, should be part of the holdings of every library serving either college students or the general public. -B. Harlow, University of Texas at Austin

One of the classic themes followed in this complex novel, translated from the Arabic, is cultural dissonance between East and West, particularly the experience of a returned native. The narrator returns from his studies in England to his remote little village in Sudan, to begin his career as an educator. There he encounters Mustafa, a fascinating man of mystery, who also has studied at Oxford. As their relationship builds on this commonality, Mustafa reveals his past. A series of compulsive liaisons with English women who were similarly infatuated with the ``Black Englishman,'' as he was nicknamed, have ended in disaster. Charged with the passion killing of his last paramour, Mustafa was acquitted by the English courts. As he unravels his complicated, gory and erotic story, Mustafa charges the listener with the custody of his present life. When Mustafa disappears, apparently drowned in the Nile and perhaps a suicide, another door in his secretive life opens to include his wife and children. Emerging from a constantly evolving narrative, in a trance-like telling, is the clash between an assumed worldly sophistication and enduring, dark, elemental forces. An arresting work by a major Arab novelist who mines the rich lode of African experience with the Western world. (October) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved