A Line in the River: Khartoum, City of Memory

by Jamal Mahjoub

Overview

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'A wonderfully subtle exploration of place, identity and memory' - PD Smith, Guardian

'A highly readable and authoritative celebration of a little-understood country and its capital city' - Geographical

'A travelogue and memoir to rank alongside anything by Chatwin or Thubron' - Jim Crace

'A most absorbing and rewarding book' - Michael Palin
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A moving portrait, part history, part memoir, of Sudan – once the largest, most diverse country in Africa – and its self-destruction

In 1956, Sudan gained independence from Britain. On the brink of a promising future, it instead descended into civil war and conflict. When the 1989 coup brought a hard-line Islamist regime to power, Jamal Mahjoub's family were among those who fled. Almost twenty years later, he returned.

Rediscovering the city in which his formative years were spent, Mahjoub encounters people and places he left behind. The capital contains the key to understanding Sudan's divided, contradictory nature and while exploring Khartoum's present – its changing identity and shifting moods; its wealthy elite and neglected poor – Mahjoub also delves into the country's troubled history. His search for answers evolves into a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of identity, both personal and national.

A Line in the River combines lyrical and evocative memoir with a nuanced exploration of a country's complex history, politics and religion. The result is both captivating and revelatory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408885482
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	03/08/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Jamal Mahjoub was born in London and grew up in Khartoum, Sudan. Since then he has settled in a number of other cities, including London, Cairo, Aarhus, Barcelona and, more recently, Amsterdam. He is the author of seven novels, and his work has been critically acclaimed and widely translated. He has published a number of crime novels under the pen name Parker Bilal.
jamalmahjoub.com
Jamal Mahjoub was born in London and spent his formative years in Khartoum, Sudan. Since then he has settled in a number of cities, including London, Aarhus, Barcelona and, more recently, Amsterdam.

The author of seven novels, his work, fiction and non-fiction, has been critically acclaimed and widely translated. He has published six crime novels featuring private detective Makana, using the pen name Parker Bilal.

jamalmahjoub.com

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part 1 Always Returning, 2008 7

Part 2 A History of Lost Chapters, 2009 93

Part 3 Divergent City, 2010 163

Part 4 Lines of Separation, 2011 229

Part 5 Parting the Waters, 2012 299

Acknowledgements 379

Credits 381

Index 383

Editorial Reviews

03/12/2018
An Sudanese exile returns in search of his country’s unifying identity in this sprawling memoir. Novelist Mahjoub’s family fled the Sudanese capital of Khartoum in 1989 when Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist regime took power; Mahjoub was 23 when he left and returned regularly from 2008 through 2012, as the country deteriorated. He finds the city in an oil-fueled economic boom, swollen with migrants, foreigners, and new construction, but steeped in anomie and seething under authoritarian rule. Mahjoub’s vivid, novelistic reportage takes in paralyzed beggars panhandling beside luxury cars, Kafkaesque bureaucracies, an editor cringing as an affable censor redlines his newspaper, a friend recalling an episode of torture, and the ubiquitous glare of TV sets airing American shows and Bollywood spectacles within the dilapidated Muslim city “like aquariums blinking with brightly colored, exotic species.” He contrasts these scenes with boyhood memories of a more convivial, cosmopolitan time (boat outings and watching movies at now-shuttered cinemas), weaving in a colorful but disjointed survey of Sudan’s history from 19th-century battles between Muslims and British imperialists to the convoluted contemporary tribal and sectarian wars in southern Sudan and Darfur. Mahjoub’s case for a Sudanese national identity that transcends ethno-cultural animosities is unconvincing; and while there’s a Naipaulian incisiveness to his portrait of Khartoum, the town feels too malaise-stricken and soulless to hold much interest. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Mahjoub writes powerfully of personal history and the history of the larger city and nation alike . . . A beguiling, thoughtful book about a place that few people know well but that seems eminently inviting in the author's hands." - Kirkus Reviews

"With Mahjoub's novelist's eye drawn to the telling detail, revealing personality, and buried fault line, by journey's end, readers will find themselves sharing his fascination with this complicated place." - Booklist

"Primarily a novelist by trade, Mahjoub is comfortable weaving the intricate layers of history, politics, religion, and culture into a single lyrical tale . . . Anyone interested in exploring the impact that time, place, and history can have on a culture or individual will find Mahjoub's narrative gripping, while those curious about the complexity of Sudan will find it revealing." - Library Journal

"In his attempts to rediscover the city of his memory and explore its fissile present, [Mahjoub] paints a rich portrait of Khartoum's citizens, from the dispossessed poor to the oil-rich elite. Ultimately, though, A Line in the River is much more than a travelogue as the author explores Sudan's history, religion and culture in what is a subtle exploration of a sense of place and the meaning of belonging." - New Internationalist

"Jamal Mahjoub's absorbing portrait of Khartoum is equally as intimate and painfully detached as the writer's own relationship with his birth place. Both his city and his book are enthralling in their complexities and their subtlety. A Line in the River—a travelogue and memoir to rank alongside anything by Chatwin or Thubron—provides an enticing first encounter for those readers who have never seen the confluence of the Niles—but it is also an affecting and heartfelt reminder for those of us who have passed time in Khartoum, why it is we long and fear for it so deeply. I have been waiting more than fifty years for this book." - Jim Crace

"A Line in The River is a fine and very readable celebration of a city that has never had its fair share of attention. There is something bracing about the way Jamal Mahjoub awakens our interest in somewhere we know so little about, and about which there is so much we ought to know. He tells the story of Khartoum and Sudan from both an African and a western perspective which makes the book informative and accessible, and always held together by the intimacy of his personal voyage of discovery. A most absorbing and rewarding book." - Michael Palin

From the Publisher

05/01/2018
In this intensely personal account, Mahjoub blends memoir with historical narrative to capture the complexities and nuances of his homeland, specifically the Sudanese city of Khartoum. Primarily a novelist by trade, Mahjoub is comfortable weaving the intricate layers of history, politics, religion, and culture into a single lyrical tale. The style of this book, which bounces back and forth among historical memory, political intrigue, and personal reflection, is at first confusing but quickly becomes more intimate. This intimacy is a theme that runs throughout the narrative lines. Mahjoub doesn't just explore or critique his homeland; he strips Sudan bare and considers the impact that the story of Khartoum and Sudan has had on its culture, people, and himself. He also isn't afraid to showcase the failures and foibles of the country's history against the beauty and successes, which makes for a very enlightening text. VERDICT Anyone interested in exploring the impact that time, place, and history can have on a culture or individual will find Mahjoub's narrative gripping, while those curious about the complexity of Sudan will find it revealing.—Elizabeth Zeitz, Otterbein Univ. Lib., Westerville, OH

Library Journal

2018-03-05
A native son returns to Khartoum, a tumultuous city in a rapidly changing region.Mahjoub (Nubian Indigo, 2006, etc.), the author of a detective series under the pen name Parker Bilal, fled Sudan with his family in 1989, when a military coup installed an Islamist regime. Twenty years later, having lost contact with many of his friends and family members, he returned to his homeland with pointed questions: "Who was I without this place that I had written about for so long?" Though now something of an outsider, he delivers a book of impressions and experiences that, though a touch overlong, stands up well next to books of similar spirit by Eric Newby and Jan Morris. A highlight comes when Mahjoub returns to his boyhood home, which might have commanded a small fortune in the Sudan of a boom that quickly ended with the splitting off of South Sudan in 2011: "In the wake of secession," he writes, "the capital is sinking once more into lethargy," and if the house is now but rubble, it evokes Proustian memories of hours sprawled on couches and chairs absorbing book after book in a household that valued writing and learning. Though his impressions are sometimes glancing, Mahjoub writes powerfully of personal history and the history of the larger city and nation alike. As he notes, he is wary of the category "exile," although indeed his parents were forced to leave Khartoum on pain of death and were never quite at home in Cairo, where the family ended up. Still, he writes affectingly, when he lived in Khartoum, he knew where he was and had some sense of meaning and being, whereas "from the moment I left, it seems to me, I have been explaining myself, one way or another."A beguiling, thoughtful book about a place that few people know well but that seems eminently inviting in the author's hands.

Kirkus Reviews