Bandarshah

This long-awaited new book by the acclaimed Sudanese author Tayeb Salih is an evocative masterpiece. Consisting of two volumes originally entitled Dau al-Beit and Meryoud, it tells the story of a green-eyed stranger who, wounded and hungry, appears on the banks of the river near the village of Wad Hamid, this work recounts the life of a man who cannot remember his name, race, nor religion, and speaks a language no one understands. The villagers take him in, teach him the Koran, and give him a name, Dau al-Beit. Restored to strength, Dau al-Beit transforms the lives of the people who cared for him, invigorating them with his ideas and enriching them with the merchandise he trades and the crops he harvests. Marrying a village girl, he remains in Wad Hamid for five years until he is lost to the river he came from. His son is later given the nickname Bandarshah. The continuing narrative revolves around the part-mythical figure of Bandarshah, his eleven sons, and his grandson Meryoud. As readers, we become the amazed spectators of village politics, initiation ceremonies, weddings, floggings and burials - scenes peopled with a cast of genies, devils, and houris - and encounter the mysticism of the Arab world described in a prose so absorbing and fascinating that we want to return to read it again and again.