Narrating the nation : Re-discovering. the self in sudanese literature

Abstract EN

Sudanese identity has been the focus of many contests during the colonial and postcolonial periods.

The polarisation took many forms: East versus West, Colonialism versus national identity, Islam versus modernity, indepdendence verus unity of the Nile Valley, Arabism versus Africanism, North versus South, etc.

In this paper, we explore the way in which these contexts were reflected in modern Sudanese literature, and also how literary works contributed to to shaping national identity, including some attempts to forge a hybrid Afro-Arab identity, as advocated by the ’Forest and Desert’ literary school.

We focus in particular on the works of leading Sudanese novelists, including Tayyib Salih and Francis Deng and poets such as Muhammad Abdul-Hai, Muhammad Al-Makki Ibrahim and Salah Ahmad Ibrahim, among others.

We argue that, each in his own way, these wrtiers have tried to forge and imagine an inclusive Sudanese identity which unites within it the various competing strands of Sudanese culture and history