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This novel is one of comparisons: colonial vs post-colonial; youth vs age; male vs female; agrarian vs the culture of the city; but it is also a lyrical story of people living by the Nile as their forefathers had for centuries. So many influences at play here.

Mustafa Sa'eed used the education provided by the British to leave for England and conquer--he wrote books, taught the British young, captivated British women, but ultimately returned to the Sudan. The Narrator follows a similar route but "indulges" in more esoteric education--poetry--while in England. He does not cut the huge swath through England that Sa'eed does but also returns home to become a civil servant. Which man is the migrant who has truly come home, I wonder?

Was it likely that what had happened to Mustafa Sa'eed could
have happened to me? He had said that he was a lie, so was I also
a lie? I am from here---is not this reality enough? I too had
lived with them. But I had lived with them superficially, neither
loving nor hating them. I used to treasure within me the image
of this little village, seeing it wherever I went with the eye of my
imagination. (p. 41)

One of my fellow GR readers has said this book should be read twice to really feel what is or has happened. I think she is correct and I believe I will read this book again someday to see what new secrets, feelings, insights unfold. Certainly the experience of reading it was excellent, though not always easy. But that is one of the pluses of cross-cultural (and time) exploration. We may not always approve of every detail but we may learn.

There's so much here and so many possible meanings colored by our own individual cultural influences.