Wings of Dust [Paperback]

The fictional memoirs of an expatriate North African suffer from a sense of incompleteness. A middle-aged man named Sharif, writing from French exile, tells how he and several other young countrymen came to postWorld War II England to get a European education that could be applied in their unnamed, recently independent country (which sounds an awful lot like the Sudan). While his classmates study, Sharif marries a local widow and runs off to Paris in pursuit of an American jazz singer. He becomes her manager, travels the world, and forgets about his homeland until circumstances find him saving the reputation of a powerful countryman caught in a compromising situation with a prostitute. After this man rises in the latest coup at home, Sharif becomes governor of the desert region where he grew up. There he wheels and deals with his old classmates and causes the desert oasis to bloom with crops and buildings, miracles that are eventually wiped out by dust storms and narrow-minded military rulers. Mahjoub (Navigation of a Rainmaker, not reviewed), son of an English mother and Sudanese father, captures the innocent idealism of the nomadic young men who came to Europe for enlightenment, as well as the cynicism and bitterness of present- day Sudan, but his characters lack purpose. We never know why Sharif does anything, how he feels about the historically incredible situations he stumbles into, and how he was (or wasn't) transformed by his experiences. The same goes for his fellow students, who all wind up in powerful positions in the government or the opposition intelligentsia. Has nothing been learned from the destruction of Sharif's homeland and his youthful curiosity? An interesting point of view and a smart, observant voice are regrettably underutilized here. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

“An interesting point of view and a smart, observant voice. . .”–Kirkus Reviews

This narrative story is told by Sharif Turab, a middle-aged man living in exile in France from an unnamed North East African country, a member of the first generation after African independence to go to the continent as ambassadors and ministers, an opening of the gates toward contact with the ideas and lifestyles of Europe. In limbo, as a wave toward returning to Islamic tradition instills suspicion toward this individualism, Turab tries to make some sense of his life as everything that he believes in begins to crumble. Wings of Dust is a distinctive mixture of intensity and anarchic movement, humorous and moving.

Jamal Mahjoub is Sudanese/British. His first novel, Navigation of a Rainmaker, was published in 1989. He won the Guardian/Heinemann 1993 short story competition.