Sudanese Novelist Sara El Jak: A Unique Style
Khartoum – Sudan Events
Novelist and social activist Sara Hamza El Jak Abdallah is one of the few successful Sudanese women novelists, she is also the founder of the Faal Cultural Centre that empowers young women through writing and literary education.
Her novels seem to have a plan and her writings are an integrated project with clear questions that examine issues of existence, society, politics, art, and thought. She is keen to examine questions of identity and womanhood.
Her writings are distinguished by experimentation and serious innovation, with a unique style. The woman in her story is portrayed with all her different sides and the character and story paint a credible picture.”
This is how critics wrote about Sara El Jak, the winner of the 2012 El Tayeb Salih Prize for Written Creativity for the novel Your Once Upon a Betrayal. She was also nominated for the Short Story Competition of the Abdelkarim Mirghani Centre with her story El Mutaqa in 2005.
Novelist Sara Hamza El Jak Abdallah was born in El Haj Yousuf, Khartoum North, in the year 1980. Instead of literature, Sara was originally trained in architectural engineering.
As a child, she received her primary and intermediate education at El Emtadaad South School in El Haj Yousef, and her secondary school at El Shaimaa School. She later received a Diploma in Architectural Engineering from Khartoum Applied College in 2002.
She worked for several private companies in the engineering field until she settled in the Ministry of Urban Planning in 2012.
On the side, however, her writing career took shape. She ventured into the field of journalism and storytelling by writing weekly columns for the Eve’s Agenda page of the El Ayam daily newspaper. In 2005, she joined the Story Club.
Sara’s writing talent already emerged long before publishing her stories, in her childhood. At the age of nine, Sara’s love for writing began with the encouragement and support of her mother, who was keen to buy books and to make reading a habit not only for Sara but also for her young friends in the neighbourhood.
