After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land.

But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed.

Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.

塔依蔔·薩利赫，塔依蔔·薩利赫是蘇丹zui著名的現實主義作傢。主要作品除《宰因的婚禮》《移居北方的時節》以外，還有中篇小說《傢庭之光》、短篇小說集《瓦德·哈米德棕櫚樹》等。他的作品一般以蘇丹北部農村為背景，帶有濃厚的鄉土氣息，比較客觀地反映瞭蘇丹的社會狀況，受到蘇丹和阿拉伯讀者的推崇，也得到其他許多國傢的重視。

張甲民，北京大學教授，主要作品有《阿拉伯語基礎教程》和《中國高等學校高年級阿拉伯語教學大綱》（第一編者），《中國文化讀本》（阿文版），《漢語阿拉伯語詞典》（參編及修訂主持）。