Tayeb Salih, one of the 2oth Century’s best-known Arabic novelists, died in London on Tuesday. He was born in 1929.
Salih worked as a broadcaster for the BBC Arabic Service, was the director general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar and held several posts with UNESCO in Paris.
Salih’s 1966 novel, Season of Migration to the North is based on his experience of the UK in the 1960s and takes a Sudanese outsider’s look at colonialism and sexuality. In 2001, the Arab Literary Academy declared the book “the most important Arabic novel of the 20th Century”.
“Salih wrote few novels, but they constituted a landmark in Arabic literature,” remarked Egyptian novelist Ezzedin Choukri-Fishere. “He contributed to the founding of the novel in the Arab world.”