In the Hour of Signs.

Gibbs, James

Inevitably, the desert provides the context. It is a major factor in Jamal Mahjoub's latest novel, In the Hour of Signs, in which he seeks to bring to life events that took place in the Sudan during the last two decades of the nineteenth century - in the Christian calendar. Born in London in 1960 to an English mother and a Sudanese father, Mahjoub was brought up and educated to university level in Khartoum before moving to England to take a degree in geology. He has already written about the experience of his father's generation, and now, in his third novel, he has accepted the challenge of looking at Sudanese history of an earlier period.

His perspective is privileged and his approach epic. In the Hour of Signs has certainly not been written to appeal to actors looking for vehicles in which to challenge existing incarnations of Gordon or the Mahdi, Wingate or Kitchener. Given the cults that surround some of these men, the decision to limit their time in the spotlight was surely wise. Mahjoub concentrates instead on peripheral characters, marginal individuals around whom he can allow his imagination to play and to whom he brings a certain degree of sympathy. The focus is on, for example, a minor intelligence officer, a much-traveled Islamic scholar, a journalist, an epileptic slave woman, and a cook who becomes a stationmaster. Their lives cross and recross, meandering in the same direction across the desert of history. Affected by the same winds and wars, they shelter from the same haboobs and have to cross the same wadis.

Geography and history reflect each other. Indeed, apart from the sure hand with which the narrative unfolds, the novel's greatest strength is presentation of the geographic context: the desert already mentioned. The prologue proper begins strikingly and authoritatively: "Dust ripped across the bone-dry plane, like a sheet of paper curling from the hide of the world." And chapters frequently open with evocative descriptions of terrain. Appropriately, the cover design for the Heinemann edition is by Hussein Shariffe, one of the Sudanese artists who has achieved remarkable success in combining local inspiration, partly from the desert, with mastery of imported materials and forms. The cover has a textured quality that is aptly echoed by passages in the text.

I am less certain about Mahjoub's handling of dialogue. Some of the exchanges between British characters have traces of fairly conventional barrack-room badinage. At one point Kipling is actually quoted, and his spirit certainly hovers over the dunes informing the exchanges. The slang used is occasionally anachronistic: for example, the OED suggests that "Blighty" and "nana" came into use only in this century.

This, however, is a minor point, In the Hour of Signs is a compelling, disturbing, and provocative work. At numerous points in the narrative the reader is prompted to return to the newspapers covering the period or to the historical accounts that scholars have since provided. And on occasions, such as when we learn that the sympathetic Islamic scholar Hawi is regarded by some as an apostate, or when the turncoat cook emerges as an influential stationmaster, the reader finds Mahjoub's comments provoking, even alarming, in their contemporary relevance.

Mahjoub was born astride a divide and has drawn inspiration from his dual heritage in assembling the skills and vision that have enabled him to tackle such an ambitious project. It is a privilege to have access to the fruits of his considerable labor, and his novel marks a new maturity in literature in English about the Sudan. After pioneering work by Sudanese writers such as Tayeb Salih and El Sir Hassan Fadl, and by British writers who have been inspired by the Sudan, such as Jim Crace, readers now have access to a new perspective. Constantly engaging, beautifully written, In the Hour of Signs represents a new level of ambition, complexity, and achievement in novels about the country. In it sympathy is shared; there are no easy options.

James Gibbs University of the West of England, Bristol