Mansi: A Rare Man in his Own Way

Tayeb Salih is internationally known for his classic novel Season of Migration to the North. With humour, wit and erudite poetic insights, Salih shows another side in this affectionate memoir of his exuberant and irrepressible friend Mansi Yousif Bastawrous, sometimes known as Michael Joseph and sometimes as Ahmed Mansi Yousif. Playing Hardy to Salih’s Laurel Mansi takes centre stage among memorable 20th-century arts and political figures, including Samuel Beckett, Margot Fonteyn, Omar Sharif, Arnold Toynbee, Richard Crossman and even the Queen, but always with Salih’s poet “Master” al-Mutanabbi ready with an adroit comment. “Mansi casts fresh light on the experiences and attitudes of a key generation of emigré and exiled Arab writers, thinkers and activists in the West” – Boyd Tonkin

Adil Babikir is a Sudanese translator and writer based in the UAE. His published translations include Modern Sudanese Poetry: an Anthology (University of Nebraska Press, 2019); The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth, a novel by Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin (Africa World Press, USA, 2015); Literary Sudans: an Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan, edited by Bhakti Shringarpure, (Red Sea Press, USA, 2016); Summer Maze, a collection of short stories by Leila Aboulela, translated to Arabic (Dar al-Musawwarat, Khartoum, 2017). Babikir is a contributing editor of Banipal Magazine. Tayeb Salih (1929–2009) is renowned as one of the 20th century’s greatest authors, particularly for his novel Season of Migration to the North, which was first published in Arabic in 1966 and in English translation by his friend Denys Johnson-Davies in 1969. In 2001 the Arab Literary Academy declared Season of Migration to the North to be ‘the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century’ and it remains a pivotal point in post-colonial narrative. It is translated into more than 20 languages, and has never been out of print in English, in a number of different editions.