Tayeb Salih’s Seasons of Migration to the North1 (1966) begins in a postcolonial Sudanese village. The novel is told through the eyes of an unnamed narrator after he returns home from his studies abroad and hears stories from his fellow villagers — including the story of our protagonist Mustafa Sa’eed. One evening Mustafa tells the narrator the tragic tale of his migration to Britain, a journey fraught with personal and cultural conflict. This journey parallels the one that Tayeb Salih himself undertook in 1952. A few years before Salih’s arrival in Britain, the British Nationality Act of 1948 had granted the people of the Commonwealth the right to live and work in Britain. This prompted widespread immigration from the former colonies, notably from the Caribbean (including a number aboard the well-known Empire Windrush which arrived in June 1948). This influx, however, led to racial tensions, and immigrants have recounted of discrimination and exclusion, including of being barred from some pubs, and rented accommodation.234 The socio-political climate of Britain in which Tayeb Salih was writing is mirrored in the experiences of the protagonist Mustafa Sa’eed. While growing up in Sudan, Mustafa learns of England as a place where he will find a sense of home: ‘this country [Sudan] does not have the scope for that brain of yours, so take yourself off’5. At school, his mastery of English is envied, ‘words and sentences formed themselves before me as though they were mathematical equations’6. In Sudan, and later Cairo, his fluency of the English language is deemed to be ‘astonishing’7, setting him apart. However, when he arrives in England in 1922 he realises, ‘the language is not my language.’8 While having painstakingly learnt English through ‘perseverance’9, he is now daunted by what he describes as the ‘living voices’10, the voices of those who have grown up in England, voices that are natural and instinctive.The unnamed narrator learns through a chance encounter with an Englishman how Mustafa was perceived in London. The man recalls, ‘it seems he was a show piece exhibited by members of the aristocracy who in the twenties and early thirties were affecting liberalism.’11 Mustafa is viewed as the ‘exotic other’, a view now understood as orientalist. The idea of orientalism was first suggested by Edward Said (1935–2003), a Palestinian-American professor of literature. It describes how the West may see the East as ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences’12 — in short, a place of romantic reduction. Mustafa observes how a woman, with whom he has a sexual relationship, sees him as an embodiment of the exotic, ‘she saw a dark twilight like a false dawn.’13 With another he reflects how he had ‘been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature’14. Mustafa describes the women he sleeps with as ‘his prey’15. He sets out to deliberately enhance the orientalist view of himself, infusing his room ‘with the smell of burning sandalwood and incense’16, manipulating their orientalist fantasies to pursue his own sexual conquests.Conversely, one woman refers to him as ‘a savage bull’17, something animalistic and uncomplicated. Mustafa shows his exasperation at the woman’s lack of love and respect for him, despairing, ‘when I grasped her, it was like grasping at clouds.’18 In his frustration he says of himself disparagingly, ‘It was as though I was a slave...begging amidst the rubble’19. When he meets the Englishwoman Isabella Seymour in a London park, he introduces himself as ‘I’m — Amin. Amin Hassan’20; she responds, ‘I shall call you Hassan’21.When Mustafa eventually returns to Sudan he keeps his travels to Britain secret. The narrator only accidentally discovers his adventure when Mustafa drunkenly recites an English poem, a rare glimpse of his past. Later, after chancing upon Mustafa’s locked room in Sudan, the narrator is amazed to find it modelled on an English room with ‘a real English fireplace’22.In Seasons of Migration, Tayeb Salih explores the implications of colonialism on identity and self. Salih’s protagonist is left with a fractured sense of identity, where his Sudanese birth and assumed English persona fail to coexist in harmony. The contrast between the spaces that he inhabits reflects the duality of Mustafa’s identity. When in England, he feels a sense of alienation for being Sudanese, yet upon his return he is unable to reclaim his Sudanese origins, and secretively clings on to those parts of him that were shaped by his time in England.In England, Mustafa is viewed through the orientalist lens, and finds that his character is often redefined by others. This imposed identity affects his self-perception and contributes to his sense of alienation. Language too plays a pivotal role in his fractured identity; rather than granting him acceptance, the English language, which continues to haunt him throughout his life, only serves to reveal the limitations of his assumed self.The story of Mustafa reveals Salih’s critique of the contradictions and tensions that arise when two incompatible cultures collide.Seasons of Migration was named by the Arab Literary Academy as one of the six most important Arabic novels of the 20th century, demonstrating its enduring cultural significance. The novel continues to be studied in contemporary schools and universities, and there is ongoing scholarly interest in its themes, particularly the effects of colonialism on personal identity in a postcolonial world. As globalisation and migration continue to shape modern society, the questions of identity and belonging that Salih explores remain as pertinent as ever.