Some Postcolonial Features in Tayeb Salih's Mawsim Al- Hijra ila al-Shamal (Season of Migration to the North)

Postcolonial theory and comparative literature are both transnational and transcultural, and have an inseparable connection with the “other”. Even the greatest postcolonial theorists like Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak have been, firstly, well-known comparatists. The novel Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih is one of the greatest Arabic novels of the twentieth century and one of the most important novels in the world. This research uses a descriptive-analytical method based on the concepts of postcolonial theory to examine the images of the colonizer and the colonized in this novel. The confrontation between the East and the West from the point of view of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha’s notions of “hybridity” and “the third space” and Spivak’s concept of “subalternity” are the most important theoretical concepts deployed in this research. The novel re-enacts the experience of the conflict between the East and the West, which is in fact, a reflection of the narrator's internal conflict as well as his conflict with the post-colonial Sudanese society. The main character (Mustafa Sa’eed), despite his "hybridity", could never inhabit the "third space” from Homi Bhabha's perspective. Hosna, the wife of the novel's protagonist, and the farmers and workers of Sudanese rural community are also among the colonized whose voices are never heard.