Sudan novelist Tayeb Salih dies

Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih, who won fame with his 1966 novel Season of Migration to the North, has died in London, aged about 80.

• One of the best-known Arabic novelists of the 20th Century, he spent much of his working life in Europe.
• Salih was a broadcaster for the BBC Arabic Service and worked at the UN cultural organisation Unesco in Paris. He also worked in Qatar.
• His works were translated into more than 20 languages.
• The writer’s experience of the UK was central to Season of Migration to the North, which deals with colonialism and sexuality from the point of view of a Sudanese outsider.
• The book was declared “the most important Arabic novel of the 20th Century” in 2001 by the Damascus-based Arab Literary Academy.
• Sudanese literary groups have long called for Salih to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz is the only Arab writer ever to have won the prestigious prize, in 1988.