Escape to nowhere

Named the most important Arab novel of the 21st century, this is not a comforting read and nor was it meant to be one.

Tayeb Salih was declared the “genius of the Arabic novel” in 1976 and 25 years later, in 2001, his novel, Season of Migration to the North was named the most important Arab novel of the 21st century.

Salih was born in Sudan in 1929 and worked with the BBC in London, the UNESCO in Paris and in Gulf states like Qatar. All the while, he built a reputation of being a master prose-stylist in Arabic. In her introduction to the NYRB Classics edition of Season of Migration to the North, Laila Lalami notes the book is considered a great literary accomplishment by leading Arab critics and authors for his depiction of place and “seamless use of oral literary forms”.

The novel, Salih’s third, is narrated by an unnamed young Sudanese man. He’s just finished his higher education in Britain — he spent seven years there studying poetry — and he’s back to his village on the banks of the Nile in Sudan.

At a family gathering, he runs into the mysterious Mustafa Sae’ed who stands out from the crowd.

Sae’ed clearly has had an urban, European education. Intrigued, he asks Sae’ed the story of his life. It takes some coaxing, but eventually it comes out.

Sae’ed’s life is one marked by the thirst for knowledge; to see as much of the world as possible and make his mark on it. In his time in London, he studies Economics and excites
interest among the women there who are drawn to his exotic background. He has relationships with them and pursues one who doesn’t quite fall for his charms as the others
have done. It doesn’t end well — Sae’ed is forced to leave Britain and journeys back to Sudan where he marries and has two children. One day, he disappears and leaves the narrator as the executor of his will. The narrator’s vacillation on the fate of Sae’ed’s widow leads to more tragedy.

Season of Migration to the North is not a comforting read — it wasn’t meant to be one. Stories of societies coming out from the long, terrible shadows of their colonial masters are not really meant to give you solace.

When the book was published in 1966, the African continent had just taken tentative steps into the post-colonial era.

However, that early promise and euphoria of freedom to chart their own fates went awry soon enough with foreign intelligence powers plotting coups and overthrowing elected, progressive governments. There was no fairytale happy ending for most of these countries and thus the book too, doesn’t have one.

The weight of history — of empires long lost in time but whose greed each successive regime
emulates — shadows the villages, the cities and the characters in this book. The men learn poetry, science and economics and try to be better versions of themselves. But, as Salih’s beautiful, tragic book tells us, the need to exploit and to take again and again are habits not so easily shed.

The author is a Bangalore-based writer and communications professional with many published short stories and essays to her credit.

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great. Come, raid the bookshelves with us.