The Owl of Modernity: Creating the Myth of an Absent Homeland

Eiman El-Nour

Abstract


This article explores the interconnection of myth and modernity in African literature with reference to the work of two prominent Sudanese writers, Dr Francis Deng and the late Tayib Salih. Both authors were highly educated intellectuals who lived mostly in the West, but each manifested a close and intimate emotional and intellectual attachment to his part of the country: Salih to the North and Deng to the South. Each expressed this fondness in his fiction, and indirectly reflected the tension between the two halves of the country. Each idealised the rural heartlands, and attempted to bring their myths and cultural traditions into life, advertise them to the world and reconcile them with modernity.


Keywords


This article explores the interconnection of myth and modernity in African literature with reference to the work of two prominent Sudanese writers, Dr Francis Deng and the late Tayib Salih. Both authors were highly educated intellectuals who lived mostly

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/n

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