The Book of Khartoum: A City in Short Fiction.. Ali al-Makk and 4 More

Khartoum – Sudan Events

Khartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning ‘meeting place’. Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan’s long, troubled history of forced migration.

In the pages of this book – the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into English – the city also stands as a meeting place for ideas: where the promise and glamour of the big city meets its tough social realities; where traces of a colonial past are still visible in day-to-day life; where the dreams of a young boy, playing in his father’s shop, act out a future that may one day be his.

Diverse literary styles also come together here: the political satire of Ahmed al-Malik; the surrealist poetics of Bushra al-Fadil; the social realism of the first postcolonial authors; and the lyrical abstraction of the new ‘Iksir’ generation. As with any great city, it is from these complex tensions that the best stories begin.

“An exciting, long-awaited collection showcasing some of Sudan’s finest writers. There is urgency behind the deceptively languorous voices and a piercing vitality to the shorter forms.

These writers lay claim over the contradictions and fusions of the capital city – Nile and drought, urbanization and village ties, what is African and what is Arab.”