What a stunning and surprising book. It shouldn't be, because it's highly considered - but I'd just never heard of this before I randomly found it in a second hand book shop. I blitzed through it in a few sittings because it was really hard to put down. I found the characters, the community, the culture all so very compelling. My favourites were the slices of rural Sudanese life that you find in the discussions and stories being bantered around by the elders over drinks. 

Whilst there's a fascinating broader story about the protagonist and the mysterious Mustafa, that explores much of colonization, clashing world views and cultures, again, the interpersonal relationships are what I found so interesting. The layers of Islam on top of European colonization, on top of agrarian villaging paint a wonderfully nuanced portrait of a life that couldn't be further away from my own.