by Tayeb Salih

Tayeb Salih is among the most respected of contemporary writers in the Arabic world, and perhaps the best-known writer from the Sudan. Not especially prolific, he has produced four novels and a book of short stories in his decades as a writer. He was born in 1929 to a middle-class family in the western part of the Sudan. After studying at Khartoum University and working as a teacher, he ventured abroad, taking a degree in international relations at the University of London. Since the early 1950s he has lived mainly in Europe, working in various bureaucracies, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation and the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and returning to the Sudan only for visits. Nevertheless, his ties to the Arabic world remain the key fact of his writing; not only...