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4. The interlude when the narrator returns to Khartoum by truck (Chapter 7) is not clearly related to the rest of the plot. What might be its importance to the novel?

It gives a glimpse of the country of the past.

To give a feeling of time and place.

I think I agree with BW.

The next question reminds me that during the interlude the narrator runs into a group of police heading to a village to investigate a situation in which a woman has killed her husband and then herself. I guess this is intended as a presentiment, or perhaps as suggesting that this is a common event.

It is a long journey, which I thought he had undertaken to give himself time to reflect on the things he had learnt. He thinks about how he had resolved to go into Mustafa's room, but got too drunk to do so. He thinks about what Mustafa has told him and fantasised about Isabella's relationship with Mustafa. When they meet the soldiers he thinks that the husband died of sunstroke rather than being killed by his wife, because such an event would have been unthinkable. Oh, the irony!