“River Spirit” by Leila Aboulela

This novel is set in Sudan during the 1880s. The author, herself Sudanese, certainly manages to immerse her reader into the time and location. You can feel the heat, the dust of Sudan and visualise the banks of the Nile rivers on which the story is set. There is a useful map which helps to appreciate the geographical surroundings and distances when journeys are made but the primary setting is eventually Khartoum, the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers.

Brother and sister, Bol and Akuany are orphaned; she is just 11 years old – it is her life that we follow and that of Yaseen a merchant who had traded for years with her father and when he is killed, during such a visit, Yaseen takes responsibility for the children who he has known for all their lives during his regular negotiations with their father.

Yaseen is the second principle character and the reader witnesses his life as trader, then student, then as a Muslim legal attorney. Sudan, part of the Ottoman Empire, a fading force, falls into a state of civil war initiated by a self-ordained Mahdi, who Yaseen does not support which leads to his well-being and that of Akuany being at risk.

Akuany has a hard teenage life she is traded like a commodity, but Yaseen returns time and again to honour his vow to look after the siblings. Bol himself is left in the care of Yaseen’s family only resurfacing later as the siege of Khartoum intensifies. We follow Akuany, later known as ZamZam, as she travels from south Sudan up to Khartoum, is basically enslaved but forever holds a soft spot for Yaseen. It is her devotion to him, and how their lives intermingle, as Sudan collapses, which is at the heart of the book driving the story forward through history.

General Gordon is featured as war encroaches on Khartoum and Omdurman; he is just one of the auxillary characters as well as Robert, a Scottish engineer and artist working in the city, who plays his own role in Akuany’s story. This readable and interesting insight into Sudan during the 1880s, and how the capital fell in 1885 after 10 months of onslaught is a good reminder of this period of African history. The whole book is enlivened by the Leila Aboulela’s authoritative narrative so we, her audience, learn a lot about her homeland, as the Ottoman Empire lost authority and British Imperialism tried to impose itself on Sudan opening the opportunity of the Mahdi revolution.