FICTION SPIRIT OF AFRICA.

Sudanese-Scottish writer Leila Aboulela's sixth novel, River Spirit, maintains the high standards set by her earlier books - The Translator (1999), Minaret (2005), Lyrics Alley (2010), The Kindness of Enemies (2015) and Bird Summons (2018), as well as her two short story collections, Coloured Lights (2001) and Elsewhere, Home (2018).

Her short story 'The Museum', which anticipated the global move towards decolonising the museum as an institution, won the first Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000.

River Spirit tells a story of religious corruption, unbreakable bonds and 'seductive hope', and has already received high praise from British-Tanzanian author and Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, who describes it as 'novel of extraordinary sympathy and insight.' Scottish-Senegalese writer Aminatta Forna is another admirer: 'River Spirit had me gripped from the first page. This is real history, imagined in splendid detail, a story of ordinary people caught in extraordinary times.'

The novel is set in 19th century Sudan, during the 18-year long Mahdist War, in which the self-proclaimed 'Mahdi' of Islam, Muhammad Ahmed bin Abdullah, and his followers fought the Khedivates of Egypt and later, the British forces, for control of Sudan.

Against this backdrop, Aboulela explores the lives of two women: the orphaned Akuany, sold as a slave to a Turkish governor's wife who renames her Zamzam, and the middle-class intellectual Salha. These two women are linked to each other by their relations to the merchant Yaseen, who is Salha's husband and a central force in Akuany's life, having taken the girl in after her father is killed in a raid upon her village.

A key theme of River Spirit is how different people respond to social upheaval and calamity. After the fall of Khartoum in 1885, Salha decides not to leave her city, since her identity is rooted in land, culture and tradition. 'I don't have the courage for exile', she says. 'I need to be among my people. The new rulers are allowing me to keep my social position, placing me with a compatible family. I must be grateful for this. It could be much worse. No, I can't make a run for it and live where no one knows me.'

Akuany, on the other hand, is tied not to a place, but to Yaseen: 'The river's song had always been that she would follow him, but now a more compelling power was taking them back where they started. They would build on what already existed. Beginnings that did not have the chance to flourish...