Critical Reviews on Novel River Spirit (3-3): By Leila Aboulela

Agencies – Sudan Events

Ayoung woman struggles for independence alongside a nation.
Akuany is a child when her Sudanese village is raided, her father killed. She is able to survive when Yaseen, a young merchant who had been visiting from Khartoum, takes her along with him, thereby tying their fates irrevocably together.
Aboulela’s latest novel is set in the late 1800s, when Sudan was still under Ottoman rule, though the cracks in that empire were beginning to show.
A leader springs up, quickly gathering followers; he has proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or redeemer, prophesied in Islam.
But Yaseen, who gives up his inheritance as a merchant to study the Quran, has little faith in this leader. Aboulela’s nuanced descriptions of Sudan’s history—colonial, social, and religious—are the best parts of this rich and moving novel.
Even as England vies for dominion over Sudan, even as Aboulela writes about the changes in power, her prose never turns heavy-handed.
Akuany is renamed Zamzam, and as her country grows increasingly violent, her own fortunes are tumultuous, as she is sold into and out of slavery, ever loyal to Yaseen, who at first thinks, “My love for Zamzam is a burden,” and, not long after, “She is not a burden but a gift.
It is wrong to think otherwise.” But while Aboulela’s handling of Zamzam and Yaseen’s relationship is vivid, even captivating, she doesn’t manage the novel’s plot with quite the same verve. The pacing often feels off.
Tragic or violent events take place with little warning or fanfare, and a side story about a Scottish painter isn’t fully integrated into the rest of the book. Still, there is a great deal to admire in Aboulela’s work.
A captivating—if imperfect—account of colonialism, Islam, and the burgeoning nation of Sudan.