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Apr. 5th, 2013 02:07 pmSeason of Migration to the North was a birthday gift from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aberration, and I went into it knowing almost nothing about it -- for once, I managed to actually do the sensible thing and skip over the introduction, even though this is always a painful thing to do. (Yes, introductions spoil everything, but . . . THEY'RE IN THE FRONT! THAT MEANS THEY COME FIRST! I have a really hard time not reading books straight through.)
Anyway, is about a young man comes home to his Sudanese village after studying in England and finds a stranger named Mustafa Sa'eed living there, who claims not to know English despite obvious evidence to the contrary. The narrator becomes obsessed with learning Mustafa's story; as is often the case, knowledge is a mixed blessing at best.
Mustafa Sa'eed, it turns out, was once a student at Oxford; a genius; possibly a sociopath; a representation of "exotic Africa" in the British imagination; responsible for the deaths of at least four women; the perpetrator of a crime of passion; the victim of a crime of passion; not Othello; a lie.
Now he's home, and determined to live a simple life. Except then he's suddenly gone, leaving the narrator a legacy wrapped up in corruption and colonialism and violence against women that the narrator is REALLY NOT SURE THAT HE WANTS. (Mustafa's wife also gets some of this legacy. It's worse for her.)
It's a short book, but as you can imagine, it packs a hell of a punch.
aberration, and I went into it knowing almost nothing about it -- for once, I managed to actually do the sensible thing and skip over the introduction, even though this is always a painful thing to do. (Yes, introductions spoil everything, but . . . THEY'RE IN THE FRONT! THAT MEANS THEY COME FIRST! I have a really hard time not reading books straight through.)Anyway, is about a young man comes home to his Sudanese village after studying in England and finds a stranger named Mustafa Sa'eed living there, who claims not to know English despite obvious evidence to the contrary. The narrator becomes obsessed with learning Mustafa's story; as is often the case, knowledge is a mixed blessing at best.
Mustafa Sa'eed, it turns out, was once a student at Oxford; a genius; possibly a sociopath; a representation of "exotic Africa" in the British imagination; responsible for the deaths of at least four women; the perpetrator of a crime of passion; the victim of a crime of passion; not Othello; a lie.
Now he's home, and determined to live a simple life. Except then he's suddenly gone, leaving the narrator a legacy wrapped up in corruption and colonialism and violence against women that the narrator is REALLY NOT SURE THAT HE WANTS. (Mustafa's wife also gets some of this legacy. It's worse for her.)
It's a short book, but as you can imagine, it packs a hell of a punch.
