Novel
تاجوج
Not translated into English
Osman Muhammad Hashim · 1948
Synopsis
Among the Hamran, a tribe of horsemen and herders settled on the eastern edge of Sudan, towards Ethiopia, Tajouj's beauty is the talk of the whole region. Her cousin al-Muhallaq, also a horseman and a poet whose verses travel from camp to camp, falls in love with her and sings of her. The novel follows this passion, in which love is mixed with feats of arms and collides with the tribe's traditions.
Context
Accepted as the first Sudanese novel to be published, the book bears the date 1948; the critic Hashim Mirghani believes it was written several years earlier, since the country's novelists often waited for a publisher and some books appeared undated. Its author, a poet of the second Sudanese generation, retells there a love story of the eighteenth century preserved in the memory of the Hamran, in the Kassala region, whose verses attributed to the lover have become proverbs. Mirghani notes in it the devices inherited from the Arabic sentimental novel and its fiery romantic language, as in the early days of the Egyptian novel.
Who it is for
In Arabic, not translated. Reading it is more rewarding if one knows the legend, very popular in Sudan, whose plot the book follows.
Prizes and reception
Cited at the head of the histories of the Sudanese novel; the same legend was brought to the screen by Gadalla Gubara in 1977.
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