If Arabic literature is all about seasons, then sign me up. This is the first book in my class by a writer from somewhere other than Egypt. Salih is from Sudan (now South Sudan), and this is my favorite Arabic work so far.
An innominate narrator returns to his rural Sudanese hometown after an Oxford education in English literature. In spite of his radically new worldview, nothing has changed in the village – except for the presence of a mysterious stranger named Mustafa Sa'eed. Mustafa turns out to know more about English poetry and European cynicism than the narrator, and he soon drops several threads of his past into the narrator's lap, introducing the machinery of cold manipulation and lustful violence into the peaceful village. But before this conceptual disease can take root, Mustafa vanishes and is presumed dead, leaving his estate and family to the young narrator, who spends the rest of the novel in a desperate search for the lost pieces of his own identity as well as the cultural identity of his friends and family.
My professor's complaint about the book is that nothing happens. If you don't like a story that begins at the end and backfills the plot, turn back now. Personally, I don't mind, considering that I'm getting all the information anyway. At its worst, this device is a cheap method of foreshadowing, but Salih avoids that by not being very concerned by plot, either. Take note: you should also turn back if plot is the main thing you're seeking.
In the place of a coherent, cohesive story, Season weaves a philosophic narrative. The difficulty lies in the nonlinear shape of the main event, which arguably takes place over centuries. It's about the disease of humanity, of cultures of cold calculation opposing those of hot passion. It's political without involving nominal politics.
Therein lies the second complaint my class voiced about the novel: it's racist. Many pages are full of description contrasting the ice of Europe with the hot African sun. English go to school and kill each other; Sudanese breed donkeys and have sex. Mustafa is characterized as the ultimate European in an African body. His genius-level intellect and sociopathic unfamiliarity with emotion are what make him a tragedy from the beginning.
I have a specific reason for disagreeing with the assertion of racism here, but it must be supported by the entire narrative, so I'll do my best to support it without spoilers. Essentially, Mustafa is portrayed as the carrier of a metaphorical fatal disease that affects everyone he knows intimately. A soft reading of the text shows this disease to be European civilization, especially in the description of Oxford spires, of frantic student parties, and of steamboats chugging down the Nile. This logic equates his intelligence with the English tradition of colonization, and there are many opportunities to examine the book from a post-colonial critical perspective. In essence, machines are the tools of empire, whereas conquered people, or simply those who keep to themselves, are closer to nature, but duller-witted. For example, the narrator's grandfather has a mud house that blooms with plants every spring, and that dies every harvest season.
However, the point is not to characterize the various races so concerned, but the civilizations. As common as human nature is, you'd be kidding yourself to think that all civilizations across the globe are the same. So many centuries later, it's difficult to see all around us the germ of industrialization that led to colonialism, institutionalism, and Pandora's box of modernisms. Perhaps you can surpass it, but not everyone can. It's the essential distinction between viewing people, including one's self, as objects or viewing them as beings too precious to conceive. Call it love or call it concern for human rights; either way it opposes itself to having a mind of metal and wheels.
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