| Summary/Abstract |
Scholars in Arab post-colonial literature have spoken of the lure of the West for immigrants in terms of the West's superiority of education, technological development, military prowess, political weight, and economic clout. Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih presents a different, but not inconsistent, narrative: his novel Season of Migration to the North suggests that the lure of the West, in the case of England, consists in its accommodation of emotional distance. Even though Tayeb Salih's literary work acknowledges the role of emotional detachment in undermining the notions of community, home, and integration, Season asserts that emotionlessness is the source of gratification for the transnational protagonist Mustafa Sa'eed. In so doing, Season argues against the immigrant and transnational notion of emotional apathy being a source of pain for diasporic subjects. Mustafa Sa'eed's lack of emotions allows him to interact with the fiction of West through embodying Oriental and other performances. The protagonist's emotional detachment from English society, its women, and preconceived notions about the Orient, paradoxically, enables him to derive pleasure from his physical trysts, nomadism, anti-colonial revenge, and pretend play.
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