Sudanese literature
Moreover, the notion of Bilad al-Sudan, from which the name of the modern country is derived, referred to a much wider geographic region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from western to eastern Central Africa.
Like in many African countries, oral traditions of diverse ethnic or social groups have existed since time immemorial, but a modern written Sudanese literature can only be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century.
In the 21st century, electronic media, which often rely on written texts and oral storytelling on video, connect people in Sudan with their compatriots at home as well as in the world-wide Sudanese diaspora.
[8] As in other African countries, both written literature and genres of oral tradition, such as folk tales, proverbs or poems, are common, but depend on their social setting, such as in rural, partly illiterate or in urban educated societies.
[12] Sudanese folk tales have been collected and edited by Abdallah al-Tayyib, a scholar of Arabic literature and language, and published in English as Heroes of Arabia [15] as well as in Stories from the sands of Africa.
[18][19] During more recent times of political oppression, forms of oral literature have been expressions of resistance towards the rulers of the day, and have even led to the imprisonment or exile of poets like Mahjoub Sharif (1948–2014)[20] or musicians like Mohammed Wardi (1932–2012).
[25][26] In the Sudan, as in other Third World countries, an inherent respect for the spoken word has created an awareness of the intimate links between language, literature and social reality.
[17] Another important factor for the development of written literature in Sudan was the spread of modern educational institutions, like the Gordon Memorial College in Khartoum and other non-religious schools in major cities like Omdurman or Wad Madani.
[32] Since the period preceding the independence of Sudan in 1956, short stories and novels have dealt with political and social issues, as well as with the question of the country's complex cultural identity.
[33] This multiple cultural identity also gave the name to a group of writers of the 1960s, comprising Al-Nur Osman Abkar, Mohammed Abdul-Hayy, Ali El-Makk, Mohammed El-Makki Ibrahim[34] and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, called The Jungle and Desert School (madrasat al-ghāba wa-l-ṣaḥrā’), where "jungle" stands for the rainforests of the South and "desert" refers to northern Sudan.
1956),have chosen literary characters and places from various regions, others wrote about families with members from different ethnic backgrounds or about people displaced from rural origins to the larger cities.
[36] Since The Jungle and Desert School, numerous other writers have included this hybrid identity in their narratives, either by choosing literary characters or places from different regions, as does Abkar Adam Isma‘il (b.
"[37] Resuming these recurrent literary topics, critic and translator of Sudanese novels Xavier Luffin made the following remark: "At the same time, none of these authors idealizes this richness, since they often quote the many problems faced by the marginalized, such as racism and civil war.
In a general sense, "marginal characters became a real topos in Sudanese literature, because of their profession, often related to an ethnic origin: the Southern alcohol-seller, the Ethiopian prostitute, the West African healer, and so on.
Al-Malik further included numerous details of life under dictatorship, "mixing them with fantasy, dream, and humor in a style that recalls magical realism", which helps the author to avoid censorship.
Here, the writer does not dwell explicitly on the dictator, but most of all on the system and its victims: His main characters are two women in jail, Rābi‘a and Mary, an educated artist from the North and a servant from the South of the country.
"[50] This cultural contrast between a largely conservative society, even in the urban centres, and the growing influence of a globalized world, is reflected in the choice of characters and plots of many contemporary authors.
This is the tension between the present state of conflict — over resources, political power, and identity — and the nostalgia for a more harmonious past, or perhaps the aspiration for a different type of future.s emerging male and female writers: The first novel depicting the life of a working woman in Sudan was "Al-Faragh al-'arid" (The Wide Void).
[52] Another woman with a feminist perspective was Buthaina Khidir Mekki, who wrote novels and short stories dealing with negative stereotypes towards the education of young girls and the consequences of conflict and war for women.
His most well-known work, translated as Season of Migration to the North and published in 1966, deals with the coming of age of a student returning to Sudan from England and his recollection of this liberating period in his life.
[55] Ibrahim Ishaq (1946–2021) was a Sudanese novelist and short story writer, whose narrative works are mostly set in his native Darfur region of western Sudan.
[66] Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin (born 1963) has written several popular novels and collections of short stories, including The Jango,[67] which deals with the conditions in a women's prison and won the Al-Tayeb Salih Award for Creative Writing.
[84] In December 2020 Sawad Hussain, who has translated numerous novels from Arabic into English, published an article about emerging Sudanese women novelists in Words without Borders magazine.
[88] Taban Lo Liyong, who was born in southern Sudan in 1939 and studied in the 1960s in the United States, is one of Africa's well-known poets, writers of fiction and literary criticism.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Liyong wrote highly imaginative short narratives, such as Fixions (1969), and unorthodox free verse,( ...) His nonfiction output consists of argumentative and amusing personal essays and bold literary criticism (...), presenting challenging new ideas in an original manner.
[91] Jamal Mahjoub, born in London in 1966 of British and Sudanese parents and grew up in Khartoum, writes in English and has published a trilogy taking place in Sudan.
[103] Sudanese-American writer Fatin Abbas based her 2023 debut novel Ghost Season on her personal experience of working for an NGO in the border region between northern and southern Sudan.
The story is set in the fictitious village Saaraya, a "flashpoint in the civil war between the Southern rebel movement and the Northern government based in Khartoum.
Another book for children called Kadisa (Sudanese expression for cat) was written in 2017 by Sudanese-American elementary teacher Rasha Hamid and illustrated by Sharhabil Ahmed, a well-known musician and graphic artist.
[131] The list of Sudanese writers of nonfiction, as another important form of narrative writing, includes authors like Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im[132] or Sadiq al-Mahdi,[133] known for their contributions to such topics as Islamic thought, politics or social issues in Sudan.
