Jamal Mahjoub

Nineteenth-century Sudan, wracked by religious, cultural and political differences, is brilliantly evoked in Mahjoub's most ambitious book yet. A colourful cast of soldiers and ascetics, nationalists and cynics, Arabs and Europeans, Muslims and Christians - some wise, most misguided - play bit parts in a vast conflict few of them can comprehend. As the rumblings of war become deafening, the narrative races towards a conclusion that is both satisfying and profoundly disturbing.

Exiled in a delapidated hotel in South-West France. Sharif, the narrator, looks back on his life. Memories of a bohemian existence in England and France, a time of love affairs and dissipation, are set against the changing political situation of his North African homeland. The experience of his own nation, with its promise of freedom, is echoed in Sharif's life. With sardonic humour Sharif describes the wealth of characters who have passed through his life. Yet how can he make sense of this life as everything he believes in begins to crumble?

A collection of 20 stories written between 1980-1991 which deal with themes relevant to various regions of Africa.

"A moving portrait, part history, part memoir, of Sudan - once the largest most diverse country in Africa - and its self-destruction. In 1956, Sudan gained Independence from Britain. On the brink of a promising future, it instead descended into civil war and conflict, including the crisis in Darfur which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and driven many more from their homes. When the 1989 coup brought a hard-line Islamist regime to power, Jamal Mahjoub's family were among those who fled. Almost twenty years later, he returned, to find a country on the brink of rupture. Re-discovering the city in which his formative years were spent, Mahjoub encounters people and places that he left behind. The capital contains the keys to Sudan's divided, contradictory nature and while exploring the Khartoum's present - its changing identity and shifting moods, its wealthy elite and neglected poor - Mahjoub also delves into the country's troubled history, one turbulent with the rivalry between Christians and Muslims. His search for answers evolves into a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of identity, both personal and national. A Line in the River combines lyrical and evocative memoir with a nuanced exploration of a country's complex history, politics and religion. The result is both captivating and revelatory."--Provided by publisher.

"Yasin is driving through Europe in a dilapidated Peugeot 504 with his seven-year-old son Leo. He's not sure where they're going. He just knows he's thirty-seven years old, his wife is about to divorce him and this is his last chance to explain to his son who he is and where he comes from. The problem is that Yasin isn't sure of the answer to these questions himself. Born in the Sudan to an English mother and an Arab father, he has two passports but no national identity. When he met his English wife, he thought that love could transcend borders. Now he is coming to see that, wherever you travel, you take the ghosts of your past with you." "As he and Leo drift through Germany to Paris in search of Europe's history, and onwards via Provence to Spain to find Yasin's ex-lover and his lost brother, Yasin reflects on the tragi-comic ironies of his displaced life and the kind of mixed-up world his son will inhabit. When they finally wash up on the Costa Brava, once the border between the Christian and Muslim worlds, he and Leo are on the verge of separation but the brink of understanding."--Jacket.

202 p. ; 23 cm