Seed of Redemption: A Political Novel

The Sudanese author of this self-described ""political novel'' is an established scholar (Tradition and Modernization now residing in this country, and a former foreign minister in his native land. But he is not a novelist; nor, it shuld be said, does he pretend to be. A cultural analyst and political historian of his homeland with a deep concern for its future, Deng writes that he hopes to reach a wider audience than serious scholarship can command. As fiction, the work is inconsiderable; as political-historical polemic thinly disguised as narrative, it must be taken very seriously indeed. Sudan is a divided, volatile countryArab North, African Southand civil war seems a permanent threat. The hero, Faris Khalifa, manifestly a spokesman for the author, incorporates within himself the turbulent, conflicting elements agitating the nationa unifying principle personified, the hope for a united nation sharing a common destiny in peace and harmony. The work spans a century from the Turco-Egyptian regime down through three generations culminating in the hero's lifespan, the tumultuous recent decades of Sudanese history and the fragile seed of a hoped-for redemption. (November 14)