Reviews with content warning for Violence - Season of Migration to the North

this book resists definition in such an incredible way. took notes in my journal so won't rehash this here, but the conversation with Heart of Darkness is palpable (and this book knows just as well as HoD how to use language as a violent colonial tool & adds the layers of recognition on how the use of colonial logics / living under the colonizer's rules explodes the possibility of identity / continued existence (think Franz Fanon and Invisible Man in that kind of violent misrecognition and motion) & yet ALSO does not let the men of the novel off the hook for how their 'emasculation' under coloniality directly links to the violent pursuit of / conquest of women & also has the most convincing Kurtz-figure & expands the Marlowe figure in the interplay between Mustafa Saeed and the unnamed narrator...and also isn't didactic or one-dimensional with any of its characters "representing" any concepts & all having such clearly social existences (even the stranger Mustafa -- who is so characterized by mobility and antisociality, is also an intensely social being?) and it's just such a startling and intricate novel and makes palpable the way in which violence (linguistic, colonial, self-directed, etc.) can reduce all life to a plane of incomprehensibility and yet *still* we find ways to plod on and try to live with this inability to act...or are we able to make that choice at all??? (and the ending encapsulates that so well). so many more thoughts (actually once I get my own copy and am no longer sticking shit in my library copy I might just reread it in a week, which is the first time in ages I've been so drawn to a book that I actively do not want to move on from it) + so much to study with how Tayeb Salih uses motion throughout the novel and often has such poetic passages shore up a fundamental and growing sense of emptiness // contrast the narrator's emptiness with the richness of the lives of the people around him...jdkafhkjdhf this was just off the charts. I think I need to sit with this forever.

Content Warnings

affanshikoh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A haunting, visceral tale set in the heart of Arab-Africa, and exploring a character's journey to and exploits in White Europe.
This is a piece of Postcolonial writing which flips the likes of Joseph Conrad on their heads, and provides depth to the previously believed to be witless, voiceless and unlettered colonized people. A masterpiece of not just modern Arabic, but also world literature.

The story is at once a mystery, and an enigmatic exploration of (I assume) typical Sudanese village life. The narrator meets the charming Mustafa Sa'eed and is instantly drawn into his world of a secret and clandestine history. As bits and pieces about Sa'eed's past are revealed to the reader, we grow to develop mixed emotions about this ruthless womanizer and roma tic conquistador. A significant B-plot of the story explores life in the Sudanese village after the sudden demise of Sa'eed, how his family carries on without him, and how the narrator and his friends and relations lead a simple life.

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