It’s just disappeared, the whole culture of reading

An Interview with Mamoun Eltlib on Sudan’s Cultural Revolution

The late novelist Tayeb Salih, author of Season of Migration to the North, is likely Sudan’s best-known writer. A wide street in Khartoum bears his name. So, too, does a local literary prize. He is a staple in Arabic literature courses at American universities, but according to poet Mamoun Eltlib, Salih has been phased out of reading lists in his own country over concerns that his content is explicit. In fact, there is amnesia of a lot of writers, as Eltlib says most libraries have been shuttered and remaining bookshops barely hang on.

Eltlib should know. The 31-year-old came of age under current President Omar Al-Bashir, whose regime rose to power after a 1989 coup. Though his schools had no libraries, Eltlib became an ardent reader of Arabic titles. He’s a leader in the Sudanese Writers’ Union and recently founded an arts and culture collective called the Work Culture Group, which launched a monthly book market. He’s also involved with a group of writers who founded a new magazine named Taksir, which has some forty-five Sudanese writers contributing from inside and outside the country. By day, he’s an editor at The Citizen, a startup English newspaper in Khartoum. We met at his office last summer, where the lean Eltlib wears a plaid shirt, jeans and sports sandals. His hair twists into long dark locks. Arabic poetry is his main medium, with English being his second language, but he also writes literary criticism and essays. While talking to me about Sudan’s contemporary literary scene, he excuses himself a few times: to send out a press release for the writers’ union; to dislodge a dime-sized wad of Sudanese chewing tobacco from inside his cheek; and to take a short story from the hands of a shy, but bulky middle-aged man who’s just mustering confidence to share his writing.

Despite ongoing strictures on freedom of expression and scant exposure to the arts, there’s a blossoming of creative output among a new generation of Sudanese, Eltlib argues. He provides a rare look at a raw artistic landscape from a country otherwise notorious for news stories around the Darfur conflict, economic sanctions, mass anti-government protests last fall, and the struggles since the 2011 separation of South Sudan as a new nation. Even when talking about serious stuff, Eltlib often lets out a gargling laugh, and occasionally claps his hands.

—Nafeesa Syeed 

I. YOU ARE UNDER RISK

THE BELIEVER: What does the Sudanese Writers’ Union do?

MAMOUN ELTLIB: It was established in 1985 by many famous writers and poets; old and classic writers have been president. There have been two revolutions...