{"id":11931,"date":"2024-01-20T08:32:47","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T08:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=11931"},"modified":"2024-01-20T08:32:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T08:32:47","slug":"critical-reviews-on-novel-river-spirit-3-3-by-leila-aboulela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/20\/critical-reviews-on-novel-river-spirit-3-3-by-leila-aboulela\/","title":{"rendered":"Critical Reviews on Novel River Spirit (3-3): By Leila Aboulela"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Agencies &#8211; Sudan Events<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ayoung woman struggles for independence alongside a nation.<br \/>\nAkuany 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.<br \/>\nAboulela\u2019s 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.<br \/>\nA leader springs up, quickly gathering followers; he has proclaimed himself the Mahdi, or redeemer, prophesied in Islam.<br \/>\nBut Yaseen, who gives up his inheritance as a merchant to study the Quran, has little faith in this leader. Aboulela\u2019s nuanced descriptions of Sudan\u2019s history\u2014colonial, social, and religious\u2014are the best parts of this rich and moving novel.<br \/>\nEven as England vies for dominion over Sudan, even as Aboulela writes about the changes in power, her prose never turns heavy-handed.<br \/>\nAkuany 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, \u201cMy love for Zamzam is a burden,\u201d and, not long after, \u201cShe is not a burden but a gift.<br \/>\nIt is wrong to think otherwise.\u201d But while Aboulela\u2019s handling of Zamzam and Yaseen\u2019s relationship is vivid, even captivating, she doesn\u2019t manage the novel\u2019s plot with quite the same verve. The pacing often feels off.<br \/>\nTragic or violent events take place with little warning or fanfare, and a side story about a Scottish painter isn\u2019t fully integrated into the rest of the book. Still, there is a great deal to admire in Aboulela\u2019s work.<br \/>\nA captivating\u2014if imperfect\u2014account of colonialism, Islam, and the burgeoning nation of Sudan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agencies &#8211; 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\u2019s latest novel &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11931"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11934,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931\/revisions\/11934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}