Halfawya’s Earrings is the first novel written by acclaimed short story writer, journalist, and documentary film maker Abdelhafeez Maryoud, published by Sudanese publishing house Dar Al-Muswarat in Sudan.
Novelist’s Achievements
Abdelhafeez Maryood debuted his new novel, Halfawya’s Earrings, under the exceptional circumstances that have been engulfing Sudan’s cultural and political scene since the political turmoil followed the upraising of December revolution in April 2018. Pulling from his extensive writing and journalism background, Maryoud has masterfully crafted narrative images that are both rich and believable.
Many literary critics consider Maryoud to be greatly talented at expressing himself creatively expression in Arabic. He adeptly manipulates classical and modern language structures with equal skill, producing eloquent narratives that are also philosophical. Before this novel, Maryoud had already published two short story collections highly praised by critics. Recently, one his short story collection has been translated into English and published by Knotted Road Press in the United States of America.
In the 1990s, he influenced many writers through his brilliant contributions to the techniques of short story writing. In addition, he wrote scripts for films aired by Al Jazeera, the BBC, and TV5, including a film about the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. Maryoud has won many prizes for his writing and documentaries.
The Novel
Halfawya’s Earrings begins with a train journey in a coach crowded with people from all walks of life. The main character starts narrating his adventures while the train travels east across western Sudan. During this trip, the train crosses cities, villages, different tribal territories, and varying terrain. This vast space serves to intertwine the events of the novel with a mosaic of diverse geographical and cultural perspectives. The fictional characters play their roles amid the plots that develop along the journey, while the flow of events distances the narrator from other major and minor characters.
The multiple points of view of the three main characters telling the story make it feel purposeful and evoke vivid and inventive imagery. Maryoud uses a layering technique to describe events, which means that avoiding repetition is not easy. The narrative, however, neatly balances the details shared as the events unfold. The narrator listens to the character Algimrawi describing his own stories, including adventures, battles he fought in southern Sudan, and personal reminiscences about romantic escapades with various women and then his wife, al-Umbrarwya. The narrator continuously intervenes to allow transition between the characters, lending the entire work a cohesive feel. At the same time, the narrator integrates his own story with the stories of other characters. A disadvantage of this entangled mode of storytelling is the disrupted flow of events, which sometimes distracts from the novel’s logical flow.
Title and Fictional Character
The title of the novel itself alludes to a female character who is closely associated with the narrator, and his unrealized relationship with her is revealed as a long inquiry about many social discrepancies. The choice of the title is nuanced; it provides an opening to the escalation of events in the narrative. The titular Halfawya is by no means just a woman in the context of a traditional relationship with a man. She is a platform used by the writer as a critical tool to interpret his worldview: She is symbolic of a country in crisis, a failed love, and a hypocritical community, beside other cracks in the social fabric. The novel thus joins a number of recent Sudanese novels that have focused extensively on sociopolitical issues ranging from dysfunctional political discourse to marginalized communities in cities and regions, among them works by Mansour El-Souwaim, Abeldaziz Baraka Sakin, and many others.
Besides being vibrant and imaginative, the structure of Halfawya’s Earrings interweaves a sprawling historical narrative with questions of geography, anthropology, Sufi rituals, philosophy, poetry, and Qur’anic verses. The novel is rife with stark visual images.
Despite the highly interactive nature of the novel, the writer can’t conceal the tone of a memoir. It echoes in the entire work through nostalgic references to people, towns, and times past. However, the damage of elements helps to differentiate the novel from any existing text, in particular the shifting time prolonged by ongoing events. Time has become crucial in the modern novel, and Halfawya’s Earrings successfully employs time and space from a critical perspective.
Throughout its three parts, Halfawya’s Earrings develops in an atmospheric and interesting world, a world whose creator shows himself to be adept at sorting through the inner desires of his characters. Moreover, the narrative deals with the world as a place replete with unanswered existential questions. The rich imagination of the author is apparent in the compelling narrative descriptions and nuanced characters. This long-awaited novel will, it may be hoped, give rise to many debates in the literary and critical scene.
Ultimately, what renders a novel a compelling reading experience is often its powerful thematic polarization and distinct narrative techniques. Above all, it is the vast imaginative space that weaves together fictional biography and the threads of memorial reflection. To critically interpret such a text, one must look beyond the immediate context of events to uncover the hidden questions the novel raises—questions that engage directly with humanity’s unresolved existential anxieties.
Nassir al_Sayeid al-Nour
October 2026
Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour is a Sudanese critic, translator, and author.
