The novel is led by a central narrator who once lived in Soba, an ancient city that was part of the late Christian Kingdom of Alawa, in what’s now central Sudan. It collapsed during the sixteenth century.
He was compelled to throw his notebook
so he bent to lift up a brick,
and could see the sniper’s beard
soaked in his own blood
“Without falling victim to affectation, artificiality, or modernist arbitrariness, he has been able to coin creative expressions that have moved beyond the pages of his short stories into daily use.”
These critiques closely follow the impact of the ’60s poetry and the evolution of major cultural currents such as the “Bush and the Desert,” which advocated an Afro-Arab identity, followed by “Apademak,” which called for a pure Sudanese culture.
“Then another dog tossed me a piece of bread, half-moldy, and another a piece of raw meat, and another a chicken leg, and another, and another, things I couldn’t make out.”
“As Max and I read more short stories about Khartoum for the collection, we began to notice that Gaetano’s focus on a bus was far from unique.”
“To start with, a literary work is subject to taxes and customs, whereas a religious book is not.”
Translator Max Shmookler, who is currently co-editing a collection of Sudanese short stories with ArabLit contributor Raphael Cormack, continues to write, in a posts that first appeared on Baraza, about the challenges of bringing the “best” Sudanese literature into English.
Max Shmookler — who previously wrote about “How To Separate Mediocre, Good, and Great Stories for Translation” and his work in assembling a collection of Sudanese short stories — now explores the literary scene in Khartoum in a post that originally appeared on Baraza.
