Editeur - Casa editrice

Africa
Africa Orientale
Sudan

Città - Town - Ville

Anno - Date de Parution

Pagine - Pages

Titolo originale

Lingua - language - langue

Edizione - Collana

Ristampa - Réédition - Reprint

Curatore

A multiple interlocked tale, as one expects out of the African-arabic region. The narrator in the first person and Mustafa Sa'eed - pivot and cardinal point of the novel - study both at different times in England. Liberation from colonialism or new subjugation? Both return into their native country after their studies.
Judgement of the Europeans is: "It seems that our presence, in an open or undercover form, is as indispensable to you as air and water." (p.60) The Sudaneses see it this way: first the ships of the white people came down the Nile, loaded with guns. They laid tracks to transport the troops and schools were built "so as to teach us how to say 'Yes' in their language." Mustafa Sa'eed takes revenge on the English women, has to go to jail, and turns up at the Nile as honest citizen. The reason and the way of his astonishing change remains unknown to the reader. Or did I miss something while reading? That's possible, the text - although tense at the end - gets long-winded (allusions to Otello). How are women treated in Sudan? Were there changes because of the colonial forces? Hosna Bint Mahmoud tries to infringe the female subjugation and fails. The novel offers several answers, but leaves question unanswered - just as we want it.
To summarize: brisk reading and - taken action and mood confirm to the situation - enlightening. My evaluation of this novel: very good.

Mediante uno schema narrativo di scatole cinesi questo libro racconta dell'avventura spirituale di una diaspora e un ritorno, e di un definitivo spaesamento. E la figura di un intellettuale arabo che vi è scolpita, bambino adottato al Cairo da una famiglia inglese, studi a Oxford e brillante carriera in Gran Bretagna, libertino che sulle donne vendica un suo senso di morte, fino all'ultimo incontro che lo forza a scegliere tra il suo essere occidentale e il suo essere arabo; il ritorno al villaggio sul Nilo, lo sforzo di dimenticare, e infine la catastrofe per lui, e indirettamente della sua comunità, è una figura indimenticabile, nel senso proprio che ha la letteratura di non dimenticare. Ma il tema del libro non è solo quello del disagio dell'intellettuale arabo diviso tra speranza e tradizione, tra valori della cultura e miserie materiali. Sembra piuttosto quello più alto dell'unità inevitabile, in una contesa antichissima di amore-odio, tra il mondo arabo e quello cristiano, tra il Nord e il Sud del Mediterraneo.
"La stagione della migrazione a Nord" riecheggia nelle vicende di una emigrazione moderna, l'antico periodico andare degli uomini del deserto verso le oasi e le coste, inseguendo sogni d'amore, leggende, mercantilismi, a specchiarsi e contaminarsi con una cultura doppia e necessaria: ad arricchirla e uscirne più ricchi nello scontro. La storia del protagonista è quella dell'illuminante presa di coscienza che "io è un altro".

SALIH, Tayeb (1929-), novelist writing in Arabic, was born in the northern axis of central Sudan to an ethnic group reputed for the propagation of Islamic scholarship in the region. His primary education was religious, and it ignited his precocity to such an extent that by the time he entered secondary school in Khartoum he had already studied prominent Arab authors such as al Tahtawi, Muhammed Abdul, and Dr. Taha Husayn. After gaining an advanced degree in London, he worked for the BBC as the head of Arabic drama. On his return to Sudan, he became director of Sudanese National Radio; later he accepted a secondment as director general of the Ministry of Information of the Emirate of Qatar, where he makes his home.

Salih's writing, drawn from his experience of communal village life, centres on people and their complex relationships. At various levels and with varying degrees of psychoanalytic emphasis, he deals with themes of reality and illusion, the cultural dissonance between the West and the exotic orient, the harmony and conflict of brotherhood, and the individual's responsibility to find a fusion between his or her contradictions. These motifs and their contexts derive from both his Islamic cultural background and the experience of modern Africa, both pre- and post-colonial. In his novels, Al-Rajul al Qubrosi (The Cypriot Man, 1978), Urs al Zayn (The Wedding of Zein, 1969), Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal (Season of Migration to the North, 1969), and Daumat Wad Hamid (The Doum Tree of Wad Hamid, 1985), he constructs an impervious unity of the social, religious, and political essence of the African or African Arab. He firmly holds that a harmony of existence is possible for individuals in a society of values and ethics. His books have been translated into several languages.