Tayeb Salih

Tayeb Salih
Born	1929 Karmakol, Sudan
Died	18 February 2009 London
Occupation	Novelist, Columnist
Notable work(s)	Season of Migration to the North, The Wedding of Zein

Tayeb Salih (Arabic: الطيب صالح‎) (1929 – 18 February 2009^[1]) was a Sudanese writer.

Early life

Born in Karmakol, near the village of Al Dabbah in the Northern Province of Sudan^[2], he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in agriculture. However, excluding a brief spell as a schoolmaster before coming to England, his working life was in broadcasting.

For more than ten years, Salih wrote a weekly column for the London-based Arabic language newspaper al Majalla in which he explored various literary themes. He worked for the BBC's Arabic Service and later became director general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar. He spent the last 10 years of his working career with UNESCO in Paris, where he held various posts and was UNESCO's representative in the Gulf States.^[3]

Literary career

Salih achieved immediate acclaim when his novel Season of Migration to the North was first published in Beirut in 1966. In 2001, the book was declared “the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century” by the Arab Literary Academy.^[4] His works have been translated from Arabic into more than 20 languages.

Salih completed three other novels and a collection of short stories. His novella “The Wedding of Zein” was made into a drama in Libya and a Cannes Festival prize-winning film by the Kuwaiti filmmaker Khalid Siddiq in the late 1970s.

Bibliography

• A Handful of Dates
• Dau al-Bayt
• Doum wad Hamed
• Mariud (Bandar Shah)
• Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal, 1966 (in English as Season of Migration to the North, 1969)
• The Wedding of Zein, 1969

Theater

• Season of Migration to the North, adapted and directed by Ouriel Zohar. Actor Mohammed Bakri received the Best Actor award at the Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre in 1993.

References

External links

• Tayeb Salih (Alain Mourgue) (French)
• http://collegerelations.vassar.edu/2001/677/
• http://maduba.free.fr/mawsim.htm -"Lire Saison de la migration vers le Nord de Tayeb Sâlih", by Salah NATIJ, in Website: Maduba/Invitation à l'adab