Fatin Abbas | |
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 At a literary discussion at MIT in 2023 | |
| Native name | فاتن عباس |
| Born | Khartoum, Sudan |
| Occupation | Fiction writer, cultural essayist and academic |
| Citizenship | Sudan, United States of America |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge,Harvard University,City University of New York |
| Years active | 2009–present |
| Notable work | Ghost Season, 2023 novel |
| Notable awards | Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship |
| Website | |
| www | |
Fatin Abbas (Arabic:فاتن عباس) is aSudanese-American academic and writer. Having spent most of her youth with her family in New York City and for academic studies in the United Kingdom and the US, she has become known for her essays andnon-fiction writing about Sudan, as well as for hershort stories and her 2023debut novelGhost season. After obtaining her PhD inComparative Literature atHarvard University, she has taughtfiction writing atMassachusetts Institute of Technology, atPratt Institute in the U.S., and Comparative Literature atBard College inBerlin, Germany.
Abbas was born inKhartoum. She grew up in amiddle-class family there until the age of eight, where her father was a university professor in the department ofEnglish literature. Following themilitary coup byOmar al-Bashir in 1989, her father was imprisoned as a political opponent of the new regime and only released one year later. To escape furtherpersecution, the family went into exile in the US in 1990. Working at theUnited Nations in New York City, her mother earned a salary for the family.[1]
Abbas lived her teenage years in New York City and experiencedracial prejudice againstPeople of Color, as well as the cultural differences between life in Sudan and the US when she returned to Sudan for extended visits.[2] She earned aBachelor of Arts degree in English literature from theUniversity of Cambridge, a PhD inComparative Literature fromHarvard University, and aMaster of Fine Arts inCreative Writing fromHunter College at theCity University of New York.[3]
As a non-fiction author, Abbas has written essays, reviews and reports for international media such asThe Nation,[4]openDemocracy,[5] theRoyal African Society'sAfrican Arguments,[6]Bidoun magazine,[7] the German edition ofLe Monde diplomatique,[8] the GermanDie Zeit online,[9] andKulturaustausch, a magazine published by the ifa - Institute for Foreign Relations in Germany.[2] For the online magazineAfrica is a Country, she wrote a review of the feature filmTimbuktu by Mauritanian filmmakerAbderrahmane Sissako.[10]
In her 2015 article "Coming to terms with Sudan's legacy of slavery", she discussed the history of slavery from the early 19th century up to independent Sudan. She outlined how slavery has shaped the prevailing public notions of identity either asMuslim andArabized northern Sudanese or as southern Sudanese of mainlytraditional African orChristian religious beliefs:[6]
[The history of slavery] sheds light on some of the inequalities that have characterised the relationship between the two Sudans. In the north, to this day, the derogatory term for a South Sudanese is 'abid – literally, "slave". This not only points to the kind of discrimination that South Sudanese have had to suffer at the hands of northerners, it also indicates the extent to which the legacy of slavery continued to inform structures of economic, political and social inequality long after the official abolishment of the practice in 1924, and the country's independence in 1956.
— Fatin Abbas, Coming to terms with Sudan's legacy of slavery
In an article published in German, she told the history of Khartoum from the anti-colonialMahdist state in the latter half of the 19th century to the breaking away ofSouth Sudan from the northern part of the country under the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir.[8] Further, she has treated topics such aschild soldiers and the world-wideproliferation of small arms.[4]
Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such asGranta,[11]Freeman's,[12]TheMIT Technology Review,[13]The Warwick Review, andFriction. Her 2023debut novelGhost Season is based on the author's personal experience of working for anNGO in the border region between northern and southern Sudan and set in the fictitious village Saaraya, a "flashpoint in the civil war between the Southern rebel movement and the Northern government based in Khartoum."[14]
Abbas has taught Creative Writing in the department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing atMassachusetts Institute of Technology[15] and atPratt Institute in the US,[16] as well as Comparative Literature atBard College Berlin, Germany, where she currently lives. Her 2012 PhD thesis at Harvard was titledClass, Gender and Indigeneity as Counter-discourses in the African Novel: Achebe, Ngugi, Emecheta, Sow Fall and Ali.[17] In 2014, she published a literary review of a novel by Egyptian writerIdris Ali discussingArab Nationalism andNubian diasporic identity.[18] Her research is centered on histories of theAfrican diaspora,gender inAfrican andArabic literature, post-independencenation states, as well ascolonialism andglobalization in African and Middle Eastern literature and film.[19]
In abook review ofGhost Season forThe New York Times, Eritrea-born British writerSulaiman Addonia wrote that Abbas "mastered the courage to dive deep into Sudan's wounds and taboos" and that "the stories of civilians in the grip of uncertainty make for a haunting account and a daring debut."[20] Further reviews appeared in the Sudanese500 Words Magazine,[3] theNew York Journal of Books,[21] theOrange County Register[1] and theStar Tribune ofMinneapolis, which praised her "great care and attention to place and character."[14]
At the core of Abbas' novel, however, are those ethical questions that often help gird societal progress, including how we confront violence against women. Each character in the novel must grapple with the right thing to do, and given the stakes, the right thing to do is never easy in war, or after a fragile ceasefire.
— Angela Ajayi, writer and critic for theStar Tribune, Review: 'Ghost Season,' by Fatin Abbas
Further,Ghost Season was selected byBrittle paper literary magazine as one of the 100 Notable African Books of 2023.[22]
During her studies at the City University of New York, Abbas was awarded both the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award. She has been aMiles Morland Foundation Writing Scholar in the United Kingdom,[25] a Fellow at theAkademie Schloss Solitude and at Schloss Wiepersdorf cultural foundation in Germany,[26] aWriter-in-Residence at theJan Michalski Foundation in Switzerland, a Maison Baldwin St. Paul de Vence Writer-in-Residence in France, anAustrian Federal Chancellery/KulturKontakt Artist-in-Residence, as well as a Mophradat writing sabbatical awardee in Belgium.[27]
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