Narrative Approach
A constructive narrative of migration and exile is powerfully explored in the novel Nouret, the recently published debut novel by the Eritrean writer and academic Abdulrazig Krar Osman. The novel reveals a confident literary voice and a perceptive command of the techniques of novelistic writing. Published in 2026 by London-based Dar Arab for Publishing and Translation, the novel has been highly praised and warmly welcomed throughout media circles and cultural hubs across Arab regional cities. In recognition of its literary and structural excellence, the work earned first place in the prestigious Bait AlGhasham Dar Arab International Translation Prize.
Through this work, the writer contributes to the development of Eritrean literature, which has long sought to establish itself as a distinctive and credible narrative tradition shaped by questions of identity, language, displacement, political despotism and cultural particularity. His novel belongs to a wider literary effort undertaken by Eritrean writers and novelists to articulate the complexities of Eritrean experience and to secure a more visible place for it within African, Arab, and world literature.
Recently, the phenomenon of migration has become a focal point in Eritrean literature, reflecting the deep, generational impacts of prolonged societal instability. Many Eritrean novelists and writers have actively engaged with this theme, contributing diverse critical perspectives. Notably, Dr. Abdulrazig’s fellow citizen, Abu Bakr Kahaal—whose acclaimed novel (African Titanics) drew global attention—masterfully depicted the harrowing calamity of migration across the Mediterranean Sea from sub-Saharan countries, including Eritrea.
From a literary and historically contextual stance, the phenomena of migration and shifting identities are not entirely new; historically, numerous novelists—predominantly Western—have narratively ventured into the lives of non-Western communities. However, their representations often suffer from significant shortcomings and inherent biases, heavily influenced by Eurocentric anthropological frameworks and colonial generalities. Joseph Conrad, the Polish-British novelist, serves as a quintessential example through his seminal work, Heart of Darkness.
Theme and Structure
In this novel, the account of an Eritrean girl symbolically represents one of the most pressing global issues confronting contemporary human destiny: immigration, the dislocation of identity, racism, and the uncertain future of a human being stigmatically labeled as a “refugee.” Narratively, the author eloquently utilizes narration to weave an integrated, cohesive text that evolves alongside the developing events.
Starting from a refugee camp in eastern Sudan, moving through the Gulf states, and ultimately ending in Switzerland, the character Nouret’s journey unfolds. These stations are not merely incidental geographical locations; rather, by artfully anchoring fiction with realistic facts, the novelist constructs a vast narrative map that encompasses the diversity and contradictions of humanity’s darkest, most invisible, and perhaps uninterpretable tendencies.
Critically, the author meticulously employs sophisticated structural techniques to ensure that both characters and events remain firmly anchored to the novel’s central theme. This cohesion is distinctly observable through the lens of interactive narrative dynamics. To achieve this, the text navigates a complex spectrum of material and cultural elements—spanning social, political, cultural, and anthropological dimensions—thereby enabling the characters to fully articulate their fictional voices.
The protagonist from a critical perspective, Nouret, is constructed not merely as an imaginary narrative figure; rather, through her interconnected human relationships, she embodies and reflects the most pressing, fundamental questions of human existence. Her uncertain destiny remained entirely beyond her control; thrust into unknown worlds, she possessed no internal options to overcome such overwhelming circumstances.
Her long, complicated, and perilous journey across diverse countries, communities, and states serves as a vehicle through which the novelist successfully uncovers the latent discourses of racism, exploitation, and exclusion. Rather than presenting these abhorrent, silent dynamics as raw historical facts or empirical sociological data, the text integrates them narratively—allowing them to be fully articulated through the lived experiences of the characters and the recounting of events.
Ultimately, Nouret endures unbearable trauma that manifests as a psychological disorder requiring either medical or psychological intervention. Through this psychological portrait, the narrator deeply anatomizes the character’s fractured psyche, mobilizing a vast reservoir of analytical knowledge and sophisticated narrative mechanisms to explore her internal trauma.
Narrative Depth
Nouret’s family exhibits the kind of tribal unit that strongly portrays the folkloric and public culture by which this microscopic sociological lineage practices its beliefs, expressive cultural arts, and domestic rituals. She is the only daughter of her parents (father Abdullah, mother), her father wished for her to be a boy to satisfy his patriarchal society where women are a source of would-be honor dysfunction. Her body wasn’t only psychologically affected by the uneasy environment where she was raised, but she also suffered when her genitals were removed: an unhealthy habit (female genital mutilation) that is mostly practiced in African rural societies. Such action has multiplied her pains and automatically transformed the innocent body into a torn one.
During her adolescence, the naïve Nouret undergoes a traumatic experience that leaves her pregnant before she fully understands what has happened to her. This becomes another powerful instance of her suffering, exposing the withered and dehumanizing conditions that shape her life.
She gives birth to a boy named Adam, whose paternal lineage remains obscured up to a certain point in the narrative. Adam’s identity is therefore marked from the beginning by absence and uncertainty. Yet the novel develops an unexpected, almost ironic relationship between Nouret, the child’s biological mother, and Nouret’s own mother, who becomes his adoptive caregiver. Through this complex maternal arrangement, ultimately, the narrative explores one of the most profound human existential dilemmas.
The conception of Nouret’s son, Adam, occurs following a non-consensual sexual encounter that takes place under the cover of a dark night, when she steps outdoors near the refugee camp to relieve herself. In this sudden, vulnerable moment, she is sexually invaded by a young man named Abdu Elnour, whose life is later abruptly terminated in a political conflict. Consequently, Nouret becomes pregnant while remaining entirely naive and ignorant of reproductive realities—recalling the same profound bewilderment she felt when she was first surprised by the onset of her menstruation.
The tribal unit into which Nouret was born and raised vividly portrays a localized folkloric and communal culture, serving as a sociological microcosm through which this lineage practices its beliefs, expressive cultural arts, and domestic rituals. As the only daughter, her birth clashed with her father’s yearning for a son—a desire driven by a patriarchal society that views women as potential liabilities to patriarchal honor.
The suffering wrought by statelessness and figurative displacement is not restricted to a single geographical locale, nor does it merely mark Nouret’s physical body. Her final destination is Switzerland, where she seeks permanent residency after managing to escape the household of Sheikh Salman, whom she had accompanied as a domestic servant. Here, the metamorphosis of her life continues, albeit within a significantly improved socioeconomic context: she eventually becomes a banker and a citizen, fully embracing her newly acquired rights and privileges. Because she arrived as a minor, the Davis family (Mr. & Mrs. Davis) took her into their home, welcoming her under their roof. This marked the beginning of a new chapter, during which she mastered the language (French) and adapted to the customs of her new urban environment.
Yet, despite this outward upward mobility, Nouret’s body remains a site of aggressive violation. At the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève Research Center, she is hospitalized and subjected to a case study driven by Dr. Giovanni’s obscure new medical theory. Through this methodology, the doctor seeks to extract the deeply buried reservoir of trauma causing her untreated, recurring shifts in consciousness. By dissecting this medical framework, the narrator critiques the ethical dimensions of scientific practice when positioned against human privacy and an individual’s right to the sanctity of their own secret memories.
Ultimately, Dr. Giovanni’s theory of “voluntary unconsciousness” receives widespread praise at an international scientific conference, completely disregarding Nouret’s destabilized psychological and emotional state. She passes away in the hospital, leaving behind an inheritance of unanswerable questions for her son, Adam, and a profoundly tragic, existential lifetime of displacement.
Migration in the novel is treated as a broad thematic experience, encompassing the many forms that displacement may take and the distinctions it produces. Nouret is not presented as a fixed identity, but as a self continually transformed by changing social and political contexts. In Sudan, she acquires the status of a refugee; in the Gulf states, she becomes a domestic servant in a wealthy household, living under an assumed name (Hawa) and nationality (Ethiopian).
The narrator appears fully attentive to the unfolding of these events, closely following Nouret’s movements and the crucial consequences of her changing circumstances. Yet the novel does not reduce her experience to a direct moral denunciation or a purely political argument. Instead, it allows the conditions of exile, class, gender, labour, and legal vulnerability to emerge through the narrative itself.
This technique reflects the writer’s awareness of how to separate, while still bringing into dialogue, the intertwined discourses of migration, identity, social hierarchy, and power. The novel’s strength lies in its ability to make these issues part of its narrative structure rather than treating them as external ideological statements.
In this masterfully constructed novel, Nouret, Dr. Abdu profoundly depicts the human condition through a powerful synthesis of linguistic command and rich narrative imagination, informative depth, establishing what can critically be defined as a highly sustained narrative structure. Drawing upon his academic background and rigorous research methodologies, the author carefully weaves a vital, compelling text. The paramount significance of his work lies fundamentally in its humanistic vision—envisaging a tremendous matrix of interactive events that successfully give voice to otherwise unspeakable discourses.
Far from remaining detached in an ivory tower, the writer deeply engages and integrates himself into the very fabric of the narrative. This immersive approach implies a foundational biographical experience, which the author skillfully leverages to construct his panoramic narrative episodes.
Furthermore, the novel undertakes the complex challenge of transfiguring empirical data—including historical and geographical facts, statistical information, and volatile social transformations—into a fluid narrative map demarcated by sophisticated technical and analytical mechanisms. Consequently, the text, or specific movements within it, is artistically shaped under the writer’s clear conceptual lens. Beyond its structural merits, Nouret represents a courageous attempt to confront deeply entrenched taboos and social limitations, successfully unmasking hidden oppression in all its systemic forms.
Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour
July 2026
Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour is a Sudanese critic, translator, and author.
About the author of Nouret:
Dr. Abdulrazig Krar Osman (PhD) was born in Eritrea in 1973 and was raised and educated in Sudan. He graduated from the University of Khartoum, majoring in Political Sciences and International Relations, before going on to earn his doctoral degree in Political Sciences from Deakin University in Australia.
He writes extensively on political affairs, with a specific focus on Horn of Africa studies. His research and scholarly contributions encompass democracy, global immigration, and international political dynamics. He currently resides in Australia, where he works as an academic consultant.
Featured Image: Book cover of Nouret, a novel authored by Dr. Abdulrazig Krar Osman.
Reading the Reader: Reflections on Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour’s Reading of Nouret
Having not yet read Nouret, I cannot comment on the novel itself. What I can comment on, however, is Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour’s reading of it. The following observations therefore concern the critic’s interpretive framework rather than the work under review. In that sense, they represent an exercise in what I have come to think of as reading the reader.
First, Nassir writes that “Nouret is not presented as a fixed identity.” In many ways, that insight becomes the organizing thread of his entire reading. Nouret changes names, countries, languages, legal status, and social position, yet never arrives at a stable identity. The novel thus emerges not as an exploration of identity as a fixed essence, but of identity as something continually reshaped by movement, exile, and circumstance. That strikes me as one of the essay’s most compelling critical contributions and one that speaks to a distinctly contemporary literary concern.
Second, I was equally struck by Nassir’s insistence that the novel does not simply present migration, statelessness, racism, or gender as themes to be discussed. Rather, he argues that these concerns are woven into the narrative structure itself, allowing them to emerge through character and story rather than through ideological declaration. Whether one ultimately agrees with every aspect of his interpretation is almost beside the point. What distinguishes the essay is its commitment to asking not merely what the novel says, but how it says it.
Third, I appreciated the way Nassir resists reducing the novel to sociology. Works dealing with refugees and migration are often read primarily as social documents or political testimony. His attention, however, consistently returns to narrative construction, characterization, and literary form. In doing so, he reminds us that fiction can illuminate lived experience without surrendering its identity as literature.
Fourth, the essay also performs another important task: it situates Nouret within a wider literary landscape. Nassir does not read the novel in isolation. Instead, he places it in conversation with Eritrean literary aspirations, Arabic narrative traditions, African literature, and even earlier colonial representations of Africa. Whether readers ultimately agree with every comparison is less important than recognizing the ambition of the gesture itself. He is locating the novel within an evolving literary conversation rather than treating it as a solitary work.
Fifth, another feature worth considering is the way identity is consistently treated as a process rather than a possession. Throughout the essay, Nassir follows Nouret’s changing relationships to place, language, class, citizenship, and social circumstance. His attention remains fixed on movement rather than permanence, suggesting that identity is something continually negotiated rather than permanently secured.
Finally, what impressed me most was Nassir’s confidence as a literary critic. Increasingly, reviews settle for recounting plots or offering broad praise. This essay attempts something more demanding. It advances an interpretive argument. It invites discussion, agreement, and even disagreement. Whether one accepts every conclusion is secondary. The value of the essay lies in its willingness to engage the novel as literature worthy of sustained critical thought rather than as a story to be merely summarized.
Congratulations to both Abdulrazig Krar Osman for producing a novel that has inspired such careful engagement, and to Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour for offering a reading that reminds us criticism, at its best, is not an act of judgment alone but an invitation to deeper reading.