Fans, friends remember Salih at literary festival

Dubai: Just over a year after the passing of the great Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih, his close friends, admirers and fellow authors gathered at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature on Friday evening to remember the man and celebrate his work.

Salih is best known for his novel Season of Migration to the North.

He also worked for BBC's Arabic service, was the director general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar, and spent the last 10 years of his working career with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in Paris, where he held various posts and was finally Unesco's representative in the Gulf states. "He was the godfather of Sudanese literature," said Laila Aboulela, Sudanese writer and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

"He was unique, he wasn't part of a movement or group, we saw him as a person," she added.

"It was like a bomb went off in Egypt when this novel [Season of Migration to the North] came out, it was called the genius of Arabic story-telling," said Bahaa Taher, renowned Egyptian novelist and close friend of Salih.

"When I say bomb I'm not exaggerating. It had a strong link to African culture and traditions."

"Tayeb Salih used to immerse himself in social cultures to the point of making it infectious," he said

"I, myself, have been very fortunate in that I only translate the books I enjoy," said Johnson-Davies, close friend and confidant of Salih's, who translated Season of Migration to the North.

"Tayeb Salih was very brave, he was writing the dialogue in colloquial Sudanese," he said.