‘I Am a Lie’: Connections between identity and narrative in Tracks and Season of Migration to the North

Tayeb Salih’s novel, Season of Migration to the North (1969), depicts the life of Mustafa Sa’eed through the medium of an anonymous narrator who is intrigued Mustafa’s enigmatic nature. The narrator and Mustafa initially encounter one another in the narrator’s native village in the Sudan. He has just returned from school in England, and Mustafa had arrived in the village during his absence. What begins as an antagonistic relationship between Mustafa and the narrator evolves into a profound understanding of one another. Both men were raised in Africa and educated in England, and both men were forced to construct fictional identities that were contingent upon the beliefs and expectations of the people around them. Mustafa incites the narrator’s interest in him when he begins reciting British poetry during a party in the Sudan, but the narrator does not immediately acknowledge their connection.