Novel
إنهم بشر
Not translated into English
Khalil Abdallah al-Hajj · 1960
Synopsis
إنهم بشر (They Are Human): in Omdurman, the novel shows the life of its inhabitants and the difficulties of the different social classes, in a realist vein. It is often compared to Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz, whose influence the author acknowledged.
Context
Completed around 1954, the novel began to appear as a serial in the daily al-Nas, in Khartoum, before being printed in Cairo in 1960 at the author's expense; the print run, sold out, was not reprinted. A copy found in 2013 allowed Jamal Mohamed Ibrahim to prepare a second edition for the Khartoum Authority for Press and Publishing. Mohamed al-Mahdi Bashra sees in it the true beginning of the Sudanese novel, and Al-Faisal places it in its first wave.
Who it is for
For discovering, in Arabic, the beginnings of the Sudanese novel in a picture of the city of Omdurman, untranslated.
Prizes and reception
A Sudanese critic hails in it an accomplished novel, comparable to the great Cairo novels of Naguib Mahfouz.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.