The Book … According to Leila Aboulela

River Spirit is the latest novel by award-winning author Leila Aboulela. A coming-of-age tale set during the Mahdist War in 19th century Sudan, it marks another success in a glittering career for one of Scotland’s most beloved contemporary writers. Here, Leila sits down with BooksfromScotland to tell us about some of her favourite books.

River Spirit
By Leila Aboulela
Published by Saqi Books

The book as . . . memory. What is your first memory of books and reading?
I remember my mother teaching me how to read the Qur’an. It was the beautiful script and the rhythms that captured me; I could only understand about half of the words. I mixed up many meanings. ‘Malik’ which means ‘Master of the Day of Judgement’ sounded like the colloquial ‘What’s wrong? Are you alright?’ when addressing a woman, and for a long time this is what I thought it meant. Reading the Qur’an was a step towards memorising it and so both reading and retaining merged. The words and their effects were intended to stay within and not just pass through. It was wonderful to learn that words could have the power to heal, to protect and to sustain.

The book as . . . your work. Tell us about your latest novel River Spirit. What did you want to explore in writing this book?
I wanted to explore the historical links between Sudan and Scotland. The Victorian hero, Charles Gordon, who was killed in Khartoum, was Scottish. The story of the siege of Khartoum in the 1880s is thrilling especially as the British relief expedition, Gordon was impatiently waiting for, arrived the day after he was killed! I grew up a walk away from the palace where he would stand on the roof, pointing his telescope north over the Blue Nile. After researching the history, I found it more compelling to tell the story from a Sudanese point of view and especially that of women, who appeared if ever only in the footnotes. I did not find a single first-person account from a woman’s point of view. So, I used my imagination to fill in the gaps. The result is a love story between a woman from South Sudan and a merchant from the North; they repeatedly come together and separate due to the wars, the intervention of others and sometimes their own decisions.

The book as . . . inspiration. What is your favourite book that has informed how you see yourself?
Tayeb Salih is known for his classic Season of Migration to the North but it’s his earlier, quieter novella The Wedding of Zein which is my favourite.  As a student in London, homesick for Sudan, I used to read it on the bus going back and forth to LSE. Even though it was set in a village, and I was from urban Khartoum, it was full of all that I was missing. Zein is the village idiot, abused and derided until a wandering ascetic comforts him with the prophesy that he will marry the most beautiful girl in the village. There is so much harshness and gritty descriptions, that the novella never tips into being a fairy tale. I did not think that leaving Sudan would affect me so much and The Wedding of Zein made me aware of all that was quintessentially Sudanese about myself.

The book as . . . an object. What is your favourite beautiful book? David Roberts was a nineteenth century Scottish artist renowned for his Orientalist paintings. I have a coffee table book entitled Egypt-Yesterday and Today, with page after page of his gorgeous paintings of the Nile Valley, all in his distinctive style inspired by his travels. Bulky temples in the desert with a few tiny people next to them. The sunny, sandy pyramids of Giza. Romantic visions of boats sailing on the Nile at sunset. Roberts did not only paint archaeological sites, there are also lavish crowded street scenes, majestic mosques, souqs and slave girls. The ‘today’ of the title refers to moder day photos of the same locations in smaller frames and it’s fascinating to compare between them and how Roberts depicted the same scene.

The book as . . . a relationship. What is your favourite book that bonded you to someone else?
When I first met my mother-in-law, she gave me a copy of The Far Pavilions by M.M Kaye. I had never read a novel set in India before, and I was enthralled by the romance and the setting. My mother-in-law was English and so, from my family’s point of view, everything about her was unusual and unconventional including the gift of a book! She was the one who introduced me to the Virago Modern Classic and to writers that became important to me like Anita Desai and Doris Lessing.

The book as . . . rebellion. What is your favourite book that felt like it revealed a secret truth to you?
I’ve had a protected Muslim upbringing, married young and never actually lived alone, yet I identified strongly with the vulnerable, lost heroine in Jean Rhys’s Voyage in the Dark. This is such a beautiful novel about loneliness and feeling bewildered in a new place. Reading it in my mid-twenties, it revealed the secret truth to me that even though I was a seemingly settled mum of two, I was floating in the inside.

The book as . . . a destination. What is your favourite book set in a place unknown to you?
I grew up in Sudan reading a range of British writers, Daphne du Maurier, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Somerset Maugham. I read them at a time when Britain was unknown to me. Then in my twenties, Britain did indeed become my destination and I had the wonderful experience of living and visiting all the places I had read about. Jane Eyre especially was a favourite as I was growing up. Also, Stan Barstow’s A Kind of Loving made a big impression on me, introducing me to another side of Britain that was rough and somehow more relatable that the drawing rooms and ballgowns of Jane Austen.

The book as . . . the future. What are you looking forward to reading next?
I have been a fan of James Robertson ever since I read Joseph Knight. I love how he connects Scotland to the wider world. He looks inwards but with a deep awareness of the complex links and history.  And the Land Lay Still was his brilliant novel of modern Scotland. I will now be going further back in time to ancient Scotland in News of the Dead.

River Spirit by Leila Aboulela is published by Saqi Books, priced £16.99.