Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in rural Karmakol, in northern Sudan. He studied at the University of Khartoum, but there is no record that he graduated (Lalami). Like the narrator of Season of Migration to the North, Salih worked as a teacher in Sudan; subsequently, he worked for the BBC Arabic Service. He then worked in a variety of diplomatic positions, including as the director-general of the Ministry of Information in Doha, Qatar, and as the representative to the Gulf States for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
After years of success as a diplomat and education advocate, Salih published Season of Migration to the North in 1969. The novel...
