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Season of Migration to the North (Penguin Classics)
 

Season of Migration to the North (Penguin Classics)

by Tayeb Salih

An "Arabian Nights" in reverse, enclosing a moral about international misconceptions and delusions. This is the story of a student who returns to his village after his obsession with the West had led him to London and the beds of women with similar obsessions about the mysterious East. (read review)

Top tags: fiction,  africa,  african,  african lit,  books from college (all tags)

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Lasse B.
  • Rated 5 stars

“Tayeb Salih 1966 - Utvandringens tid (Leopard Förlag, 2006)

Jag måste erkänna att jag har aldig läst en bok från Sudan tidigare, men någon gång måste ju bli den första. Överhuvudtaget är det sällan jag kommit i kontakt med detta stora land i öknen. Jag vet var det ligger på kartan men trots att Nilen och Khartoum nämdes flera gånger i bokens början trodde jag ändå att jag var i Etiopien. Men nu har jag lärt mig ett och annat om Sudan.

När jag började läsa hade jag aldig...”

Lasse B.’s full review »
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Community:
  • Rated 4.147059 stars
Amazon:
  • Rated 4 stars
  

Newest Comments

  • Marcus

    marcus said:

    “this is for Ahmed H, who sent me a public note, but I don't seem to be able to reply to it from my page.

    Hi Mark
    I do appreciate your critical views on Tayeb Saleh story but I believe he is greater than what you had read for. The book you spoke about is one of his great works and it is now one of the books being studied in many greater International Universities. It is enough for him that he was rewarded : NOBLE for Literature. Please read it again with no sensitivity to any thing but as an ART then feed back.
    THANX

    Well, I hope you are referring to my essay at http://www.scribd.com/doc/3011800/Tayeb-Salih-Migration-to-the-North
    and not just to the comment I made here.

    As for the book being studied in many universities, I think its an important document in the Post-Colonial corpus, but possibly not for the reasons you think. It represents a number of viewpoints on the status of third-world men and the English, on sexual and political grounds.

    To say as hosam G does here , quoting Saleh, that "the writing is its own justification" and the "novel is a world with its own rationale... He sternly believes that since a novel is fictional, reality therefore should not become part of it" seems to me to be meaningless.

    Every writer, unless they are writing about Harry Potter or Hobbits, reflects his political situation.Saleh is dubious about the value of post-colonial posturing in Sudan and says so fairly clearly.
    If Saleh wants to distance himself from his early writings, that's another matter.”

    posted Friday, June 20 2008
  • Marcus

    marcus said:

    “a problematic novel: for his admiration of Mustapha Saeed, for the undecided narrator, for the perverted picture of English women. My full review is over on Scribd:
    http://www.scribd.com/doc/3011800/Tayeb-Salih-Migration-to-the-North”

    posted Saturday, May 31 2008
  • hosam g

    hosam g said:

    “Writing requires creating a distance between artistic expression and reality, believes Saleh. In Seasons of Migration, "the writing is its own justification" and the "novel is a world with its own rationale", says Saleh. He sternly believes that since a novel is fictional, reality therefore should not become part of it.Ironically, the novel, Seasons of Migration to the North, was banned in Saleh's native Sudan for a few years despite the fact that it won him prominence and fame worldwide.”

    posted Wednesday, February 13 2008 ( | view 1 reply )
  • dabora

    dabora said:

    “This is the best novel have ever read in my life.”

    posted Friday, December 28 2007
  • abdalla a

    abdalla a said:

    “this is a great book i have ever read, i used reading it more and more...”

    posted Monday, December 3 2007
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