This Paperback Book item from Lynne Rienner Publishers was reviewed on 6-Nov-2008. Search ISBN:0894101994 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. Season of Migration to the North: A Novel Reference Book. Classifications : African & Middle Eastern World Literature Literature Humanities New & Used Textbooks Custom Stores Specialty Stores Books General AAS World Literature Literature Humanities New & Used Textbooks Custom . Click the following link to view the cover of Season of Migration to the North: A Novel. Related topics: World Literature. Literature. Humanities. Custom Stores. Specialty Stores. Books. General AAS. World Literature. Literature. Humanities. requestid: 3e7884ec-0c85-4bc5-8039-8264ea8d2eff
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1) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. I never received my book and i even payed more for the book to come faster!¤ 2) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. I stumbled upon this book when I found it on the IB World Literature list and among the teachable (but until I attempted it, untaught) books in an international school. Looking for new material, I took it home over the summer with a stack of several others, the covers of which were far more inspirational. The look of it put me off and it was the last book in the pile that I read, but none of the other works were so immediately or so viscerally appealing; none made me so deliciously uncomfortable. I decided to teach it the following year--no simple task--it is a racy, culturally complicated, morally ambiguous work, but it is also beautifully crafted and incredibly rich. My students loved it.
It´s difficult to draw comparisons to this book, but I suppose that Season of Migration to the North, with its utterly engaging but corrupt narrator(s) and bluntly lyrical style, is reminiscent of Nabokov´s Lolita, or Fowles´ The Collector, or Fitzgerald´s Tender is the Night. Except that it is also nothing like these works. This is a book that can be read in a few short hours, but shouldn´t. It was ideal for my international HS students who, although unschooled in either Conrad or Sudanese culture, were very conscious of what it means to be caught between worlds.
Somebody should reissue the novel with a new cover and an eye to its ability to appeal to a contemporary audience; Salih´s writing is fluid and completely mesmerizing and his story is full of beauty and pain. If you love words and are looking for a book that defies categorization, try this one.
¤ 3) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. It´s interesting to read reviews of this short novel. Half of the readers see it as a satirical version of Joseph Conrad´s "Heart of Darkness". The other half - who perhaps have never read Conrad - think it´s a vain, silly (although lyrically written) tale of a sex-maniac guy who likes to seduce and abandon women. This is one of the inherent problems in a novel which is meant to reference another work. If you were to read "Bored of the Rings" (an awesome parody of Lord of the Rings) without ever reading Lord of the Rings you might think it silly. Read them side by side and you realize the brilliance at work. Not only is that true here as well, but I also do think that Season of Migration to the North stands alone as a work in its own right.
First, if you´ve never read "Heart of Darkness", look it up on the web and read it. It´s online in its full text (it is out of copyright now) and you can read it for free. It´s a short novel, just like Season, and should only take you an hour or two. It is a brilliant work, well deserving of its high acclaim. Go on, we´ll wait for you to come back.
Now, having read Heart, you can see the many similarities with Season. Both tell of someone starting from their own civilization and venturing out into the "opposite", and being changed by the experience. In Heart, an Englishman ventured into the Congo. In Season, Mustafa - a brilliant but anchorless student - is sent for education up to Cairo and then to London. Rather then becoming "refined" by the experience, he quickly bores with the women continually throwing themselves at his "exotic excitement". He deliberately lies to them about his background, his country´s history, the meaning of his culture, and they don´t care - they just want to be held by his ebony hands.
Both novels create meaning in the power of the river, with the way it twists and turns around obstacles and keeps going. It is water which brings new life and destroys existing ones. Both novels use a second hand narration style, so you are hearing a lot of the story from a more neutral observer.
Some people take exception with Season´s focus-character, Mustafa, being a playboy. Really, he is in no way any worse than many novel protagonists! The only difference here is that the women he abandons then all decide life is not worth living :) Hopefully nobody was taking that as a serious fact-ridden narration, that this beautiful dark man was waltzing through London society leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake and it was another common happening. To me it was a social commentary on how certain types of individuals glamorize "powerful savages", give themselves over fully to the fantasy and then cannot deal with reality when it rears its head. Wrap this up with the aforementioned tongue-in-cheek references to Heart and you begin to understand where this was all coming from.
I loved the lyrical beauty of the telling, the wealth of details about Sudan life, about how individuals felt about the colonization of Sudan and the subsequent social upheavals. Changes are coming - they are hinted at throughout the story. Wooden water mills are turning into pumps. Cars are traveling roads once only seen by camels. Even so, a 30 year old widow who does not want to marry is forced into a wedding with a man 40 years her senior, solely because her father orders her to.
I think there´s a lot to learn here, and that the journey is full of beautiful imagery. If you´ve read this once and it didn´t make sense to you, then read Heart of Darkness. Read a book or two on the history of Sudan. Then come back to this, and see what new layers present themselves.
¤ 4) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. One of the best books I´ve ever read. I am still trying to understand why it has been banned in so many countries.¤ 5) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Mustafa Sa´eed´s relationship with Jean Morris is different from all the other relationships he had with other woman. Most importantly this relationship is different as it is the only relationship retold in which Mustafa is not in control at all times. In this relationship Mustafa starts out the hunter, turns into the prey and finally becomes a mixture of both hunter and prey or put differently both the controller and controlled of the relationship.
With every relationship shown to us in `Seasons of Migration to the North´ Mustafa Sa´eed is the hunter and controller in the relationship. We can see this with his relationship with Isabella Seymour. Isabella is married to a successful surgeon and has 2 children. Up to this point she has had eleven years of happy marriage. We see her submissive relationship with Mustafa.
A country girl from the outskirts of Hull. He had seduced her with presents, honey words, and an unfaltering way of seeing things as they really are. . . . She would lick my face with her tongue and say "Your tongue´s as crimson as a tropic sunset."
Submission does not mean ignorance. Both Isabella and Ann realized in one way or the other that they were the controlled party or the prey. Isabella was resigned and morose.
In the final period before her death she used to suffer severe attacks of depression. Several days before her death she confessed to me her relationship with the accused. She said she had fallen in love with him and that there was nothing she could do about it.
We see anger and despair on the other hand with Ann. Ann Hammond seems incapable of coping with the realization of the hollowness of her relationship with Mustafa. We see this bitterness and anger in her last writing at the time of her suicide.
In Alice Walkers You Can´t Keep a Good Woman Down the emotions and ideas conveyed are far more important and poignant then the stories themselves. Each story is told to teach us about an idea or at least educate us on the emotion involved. The stories are a tool and not primarily an entertainment construct.
Mustafa´s wife in the village is an enigma. We are told very little about her life with Mustafa. We see independence on her part after his death but this tells us little about his relationship with her. It does seem that she was the dominated partner, as she never went into his special room.
The other woman who stands out in Mustafa´s life is Mrs. Robinson. Mustafa´s relationship with her though is one more resembling a Mother Son relationship. Mustafa does desire her early on before he goes to London but she is his mother in his heart if not in blood.
With Jean Morris the relationship is completely different. Mustafa starts out by pursuing but he is rebuffed at every turn. She finally marries him but not submissively but in a sort of challenge.
At the time of Jean Morris´s death is the only time we see the strange relationship changing so that both Mustafa and she were both hunter and prey.
Mustafa seems conflicted to the day he disappeared. His relationship with Jean Morris impacted him in ways that none of the other woman did. It seems impossible to determine Mustafa´s true feelings about Jean Morris. His feelings could have been love, remorse, hate or any combination of these. One thing is certain and that is that his feelings were powerful beyond anything else aroused by any of the other woman. She impacted and changed his life in a way that none of the other woman did.¤ 6) Paperback Book Season of Migration to the North: A Novel by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Salih´s shocking and beautiful novel reveals much about the people on each side of a cultural divide. A brilliant Sudanese student takes his mix of anger and obsession with the West to London, where he has affairs with women who are similarly obsessed with the mysterious East. Life, ecstasy, and death share the same moment in time. First published in Arabic in 1969.
Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in the Northern Province of Sudan. He studied at the University of Khartoum and London University and has served as head of drama in the BBC s Arabic Service and director-general of information for the state of Qatar.
Denys Johnson-Davies has published more than twenty-five volumes of stories, novels, plays, and poetry translated from modern Arabic literature. He lives in Cairo.¤ Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 4-Dec-2008, 08941019949780894101991, 340-580-630-470-230-940-730-981-8 
Season of Migration to the North: A Novel, Book, Image © Lynne Rienner Publishers
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