Customer Reviews

Season of Migration to the North (Penguin Modern Classics)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Tayeb Salih's great novel is a compelling satirical rewrite of Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS. In Salih's version, instead of a European intellectual travelling to Africa to be corrupted by his contact with "primitive savagery," the protagonist starts out as an idealistic young man from Sudan who travels northward to Europe, where he is undone by corruption, decadence, and the mutual destructiveness of unhappy love affairs. The novel is cleverly written and well translated, with terrific insights into the relationships of southern and northern hemispheres; the colonized to their colonizers; Arabs and Europeans; and men and women. I've read a lot of Arab novels (and many more African ones); A SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH is the best I've read to date.

Postcolonial and more than a little postmodern, this short novel tells a story within a story and goes through a variety of different styles of storytelling, representing a range of perspectives on being African in an Africa both bound in tradition and transformed by the influence of Europe. Born of both worlds, the North and the South, the novel calls to mind Joseph Conrad from its first words, its unnamed narrator speaking to an unseen audience of "gentlemen." And that is only the beginning of many ironies, as the novel interweaves mystery, melodrama, travelogue, bawdy humor, politics, sociology, history, topography, Faustian tale, confession, and some very racy material that comes close to being pure potboiler.

Set in Arab Sudan in the mid-20th century, the book can be read for any of several themes: the exoticism of Africa in the European imagination, the subjugation of women, the peril in the triumph of reason over compassion, the difficulty of determining truth in a world of secrecy and lies, the transformation of tribal village life with the introduction of foreign ideas and technology, and so on. Like the work of literature that it is, the book can be read more than once for its richly complex layers of meaning, where literal and figurative trade places at will. The knife-like edge of a dangerously superior intellect, for example, reappears later in the novel as a murder weapon - not once but twice. Earns a place on any shelf of 20th-century world literature.

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.

This novel was published in Arabic in 1966 and translated into English in 1969 by Denys Johnson-Davies. It's been called one of the major Arabic novels written in the 1960s as well as an important novel on the subject of a non-Westerner's journey to and return from the West.

The first 30-odd pages were superb, introducing deftly the world of the present-day village in Sudan and one character's earlier years and travel to Europe. Throughout the novel, the atmosphere of the village was conveyed well, particularly -- as mentioned by an earlier reviewer -- in the earthy bantering of a group of old villagers.

After the beginning, though, the novel developed in ways that this reader just couldn't find credible. The body count in England seemed laughably high, and I was thrown by the author's skipping over the decades of the older man's life and education in England, schematic accounts of his adventures, and the lack of a firm conclusion of his part of the story presented in his own voice. The younger man functioned well as a narrator, but why he ended up where he did was also beyond me.

The author seemed to be setting up parallels between travel to the West and the journey inward, between the local village and Western ones, between the two men, and between the behavior of the foreign and local women. Yet many of these were too subtle for this reader to see exactly what the author might be suggesting in each case. That some people risked misfortune if they entered the West without a firm grounding in their own culture? That some wasted their potential if they went abroad without bringing back something of value to their own culture? (And yet the older man seemed to do fairly well for the village for a time after returning.) That both men in their different ways squandered opportunities for love and found themselves trapped between cultures? (Yet earlier the younger man had felt a firm grounding in his own culture after returning.) And that Western women might enjoy too much freedom and local ones too little?

Though I could follow the difficulty the two characters had in integrating different sides of their personality caused by exposure to the West, the author's oblique approach seemed to leave other points of the book beyond my grasp, and so in the end the book didn't really speak strongly to me.

Some excerpts:
"All of us, my son, are in the last resort traveling alone."

"My bedroom was like the operating theater in a hospital . . . She entered my bedroom a chaste virgin and when she left it she was carrying the germs of self-destruction within her."

"My store of hackneyed phrases is inexhaustible. I felt the flow of conversation firmly in my hands, like the reins of an obedient mare: I pull at them and she stops, I shake them and she advances; I move them and she moves subject to my will, to left or to right."

"By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe."

"'May I divorce, Hajj Ahmed,' said Bint Majzoub, lighting up a cigarette, 'if when my husband was [with me] I didn't let out a scream that used to scare the animals tied up at pasture.'"

"'You know how life is run here,' he interrupted me. 'Women belong to men, and a man's a man even if he's decrepit.'"

"[My friend] will not believe the facts about the new rulers of Africa, smooth of face, lupine of mouth, their hands gleaming with rings or precious stones, exuding perfume from their cheeks, in white, blue, black and green suits of fine mohair and expensive silk rippling on their shoulders like the fur of Siamese cats, and with shoes that reflect the light from chandeliers and squeak as they tread on marble . . . . how can I say to Mahjoub that this very man [who exhorts his people to root out bourgeois attitudes] escapes during the summer months from Africa to his village on Lake Lucerne and that his wife does her shopping at Harrods in London, from where the articles are flown to her in a private plane, . . . that he has acquired whole estates, has set up businesses and amassed properties, has created a vast fortune from the sweat dripping from the brows of wretched, half-naked people in the jungle?"

"The books -- I could see in the light of the lamp that they were arranged in categories. Books on economics, history and literature. Zoology. Geology. Mathematics. Astronomy. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Gibbon. Macaulay. Toynbee. The complete works of Bernard Shaw . . . . Not a single Arabic book. A graveyard. A mausoleum. An insane idea. A prison. A huge joke. A treasure chamber. 'Open Sesame, and let's divide up the jewels among the people.'"

"We teach people in order to open up their minds and release their captive powers. But we cannot predict the result. Freedom -- we free their minds from superstition. We give the people the keys of the future to act therein as they wish."

"Season of Migration to the North" is simply an undiscovered gem among literary works. The work presents a story of a mysterious character who after being educated in Sudan follows his quest for knowledge to the "cold north" of London.
Seemingly a simple story develops into a complex character study weaved in with issues of colonialism in African countries, the effect of economics on the distrubution of wealth in the world, the meaning of economics as an academic discipline, and most importantly a quest for a personal and cultural identity - the paradox of diaspora.
The work is beautifully translated, as the reader will notice thus contributing to its lyrical and precise execution in which every word counts. The format in which the work is presented might confuse a few people but is highly relevant to the character and plot development.
For those familiar with Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" this will prove to be a worthwhile read which takes the concepts adressed in Ellison's work to a next level.
Also recommended is a film "The Wedding in Galilee" for further deconstruction and interpretation.

Season of Migration to the North is one of the greatest novels that I have ever read and I am a reader. The book is small but it has great details and great events. I admire the main character, Mustafa Saeed, for his unique personality; he is great in every aspect of life but the social life. I never understood why he treated women with very little "respect". I know that these women were attracted to his uniqueness and intelligence but I could not figure out his motivations behind hurting all of them. Your mind drifts sometimes to consider the fact that Sudan was colonized by the British and this was the author's way of discribing how Sudanese felt toward their colonizer, but I doubt that was the case! His Sudanese wife suffered as well.

I enjoyed the vivid discription of the Nile river, the villages, and villagers, the Sudanese traditions. I did not even imagine that the ending was going to be like this. It was very powerful and just if you think about it, you will see how Mustafa Saeed affected everyone's life not just his own. Mustafa Saeed's character is brilliant!! the novel is brilliant.

It seems to me that most of these five-star reviewers are praising the book they want this to be rather than the book it actually is. This is definitely not a Heart of Darkness. I have read Heart of Darkness. Nor is this even remotely an Invisible Man. Invisible Man led us step by step through the concrete experiences and cultural conflicts that ultimately came to define the main character. In this book the only concrete experiences are those in the village on the Nile in the Sudan, (and these passages, to be fair, are exceptionally well written, and do make the book worth reading, although I doubt these are the ones that attract the typical Arabic reader). Whatever happened to these two characters during their "migration to the north" is left totally to our imagination, (except for a string of oh-so-60ish sexual encounters, where the protagonist can bed whomever he wants, whenever and wherever he wants, at the drop of a hat, and totally on his own terms. James Bond, anyone?). Come on, Tayeb, if you've got a grievance, give us the grievance. All you've given us is a fantasy, and not even a very engaging one at that.

One of my fellow book bloggers aptly described Tayeb Salih's "Season of Migration to the North" as a "sort of reverse 'Heart of Darkness'" (a perspective shared by other Amazon reviewers as well). Considered one of the finest examples of twentieth-century Arabic literature, Salih's novel centers on Mustafa Sa'eed, an inverted, Byronic version of Kurtz. Through Mustafa's stories to the unnamed narrator, an educated man recently returned from abroad, we learn that Mustafa had lived for some time in London, the cosmopolitan capital of imperialism. His genius mind earned him accolades in the field of economics, even as he fancied himself a sexual conqueror of white women who indulged their exotic, erotic fantasies of "darkest Africa" before killing one and driving the others to suicide. As Sudan moves toward independence and modernization, the narrator finds himself increasingly obsessed with the tormented memory of Mustafa, whom he comes to view as a warped reflection, like the negative of a photo, of his own ambiguous relationship to the West and Sudanese tradition.

Like Joseph Conrad, Tayeb Salih's prose is dense and vivid, occasionally bordering on overkill but skillfully straddling the line between purple and poetic. (There is also in "Season" a lot of imagery associated with the Nile River.) Both authors also refuse to exalt one side and reproach the other in the narrative of colonialization. Whereas Conrad portrayed "civilization" (read: Europe) as a mere covering for "gratified and monstrous passions" that find release in distant lands among dark and mysterious foreigners, Salih takes a more expansive approach to the subjects of society and humanity. Europeans are just like us, the narrator explains to his friends and family, "just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated. . ." "Season of Migration to the North," despite its bleak tone, is a very humanistic book.

Salih's humanist outlook further demands that Sudan also be held accountable for its own approach to gender and oppression. Though popularly seen as a post-colonial narrative, "Season" also takes a hard look at the subjugation of Sudanese women in a fiercely patriarchal society. Beyond Mustafa's own misogyny (he treats white women like disposable playthings, although, in a brilliant instance of intersectionality, they also treat him as an exotic commodity) and its final disastrous outcome, another defining moment in "Season" is the sudden tragedy that occurs when an independent widow is forced by her father and brothers to marry an older man she hates. Added to that is the blasé treatment is female genital mutilation, a human rights violation still prevalent today, and a picture emerges of a country with its own anxieties and own systems of oppression. Tayeb Salih does not condemn either English or Sudanese culture. But he does make it clear that the relationships between both individual humans and the societies they belong to are deeply complex subjects with many shades of gray.

"Season of Migration to the North" is an excellent, eloquent study of -isms: post-colonialism, racism, and sexism. But it is hardly the didactic protest novel it probably could have been in less capable hands. Tayeb Salih takes real humans and demands that the reader examine their thoughts and behavior and the cultural context in which their actions take place. "Season of Migration" is thought-provoking read and comes highly recommended.

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.

Tayeb Salih concludes his classic work with the subject phrase on the next to last page, and it does capture the essence of this masterful novel. Salih died in 2009; he was Sudanese. This novel concerns the education of two Sudanese in England, over different time periods, and thus tracks Salih's own life. It is an intense and lyrical work, and he conveyed much on the dislocation of people who have been colonized when they attempt to bridge the two cultures; far better, in my opinion, that V.S Naipaul, for example. Unlike many immediate post-colonial works, Salih wrote in his native Arabic. The novel was first published in 1966. The author collaborated with Denys Johnson-Davis to produce this excellent English translation, in 1969. This edition contains a useful introduction by the Moroccan writer, Laila Lalami. In 2001, a panel of Arab writers and critics proclaimed it the most important Arab novel of the 20th Century. I would agree.

Salih skillfully uses a Sudanese narrator, who had studied the works of an "obscure English poet" in London, after World War II, to relate the story of Mustafa Sa'eed, a prodigy who leaves his native Sudanese village, attending school in Cairo first, and then on to England, during the early inter-war period. At one level, he is not a very sympathetic figure, relentlessly using "Orientalist" images of his native land (both jungle, with animals that do not actually exist, alternatively with desert) to seduce a string of susceptible white women. He promotes the "lie" that he lives. There are no "innocent victims" in this book, and the author takes a rather sardonic view of the various women who seek out this "exotic" experience. In his native land, he is proclaimed as the first to marry a white woman. But was it a prize? Or did it lead to his doom?

Salih has a startling modern perspective on the neo-colonial aspects of, say, the World Trade Organization, long before it existed. Consider: "Be sure, though, that they will direct our affairs from afar. This is because they have left behind them people who think as they do." And, "The schools were started so as to teach us to say `Yes' in their language." With actually colonialism only a few years in demise, Salih is also profoundly disillusioned with the new African leaders, and he is only a few steps away from proclaiming their "governance" as a kleptocracy.

But it sure is not all political or cultural dislocation. Salih also weaves a healthy, earthy eroticism through his work. An endearing character is Bint Majzoub, a woman who has already buried several husbands. She sits around "with the boys," smokes, drinks, and renders frank assessments of the essential aspect of the male-female relationship. Although it has only come to the West's attention in the last decade or so, what is euphemistically termed "female circumcision," and more correctly termed, and in deference to censorial sensibilities, I'll only use the initials, FGM, Salih has incisive observations on its practice, and how it is primarily located only in certain African countries, and is not practiced throughout most of the Islamic world; al-humdullah! There is also a wonderful "equal opportunity" aspect and a brilliant duality of outcomes for spousal abuse. An intensely written tale with high dramatic tension.

Late in the book the author reveals Mustafa Sa'eed life's bibliography. It includes Thomas Carlyle's The French Revolution (Dodo Press), the works of Toynbee, Gibbon, Ford Madox Ford, Stefan Zweig, Charles Doughty, and many others. It is humbling. And with all those ideas, he seeks fulfillment, of sorts, by returning to his native village.

Small town life, leaving home for the big city, the thrills, and the disillusionment, and a yearning for home are themes that transcend cultures, and are encompassed within more than one. Salih masterfully adds the additional "spices" of a colonial subject people, racism, and the differences between Islam and the more secular West. It is a compact and dense work to be savored, of only 140 pages. 5-stars plus.