Migratory minds
Denys Johnson-Davies' translation of Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North in 1969, three years after it first appeared in Arabic, set the Sudanese masterpiece on a path of resounding success and triggered a series of translations into almost all major languages. Last month the novel's international reputation was confirmed further, and its author canonised, when it became the first Arabic book to appear in the Penguin Classics series. Below the translator's introduction to the 1989 edition

Return tickets
Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies, London: Penguin Classics, 2003. pp169

Vegetal and mineral memory: The future of books
The city of Alexandria played host on 1 November to the renowned Italian novelist and scholar Umberto Eco , who gave a lecture in English, on varieties of literary and geographic memory, at the newly opened Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Al-Ahram Weekly publishes the complete text of the lecture

Présences arabes
Le Paris arabe (Arab Paris), Pascal Blanchard et al, Paris: La Découverte, 2003. pp247

At a glance
A shorthand guide to recent publications compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani