Ghost Season
Published on 29. January 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
350 pages
978-1-914344-77-0 (ISBN)
Description
A beautifully dynamic novel which connects five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border.
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, this discovery foreshadows more trouble to come.
Everyone has a different story. William, a South Sudanese translator, connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a nomad from the north with whom he's fallen in love. Amidst the chaos, Dena, a Sudanese-American filmmaker, struggles to find a connection with her homeland. There is Alex, a white aid worker from the American Midwest whose plans in the country are derailed by a rapidly changing climate and an impending civil war. And then there is Mustafa, a precocious twelve-year-old boy, whose plans to escape poverty set off a series of cataclysmic events on the compound.
Living in a Sudan riven by conflict presents challenges for William, Layla, Dena, Alex and Mustafa. To overcome them, they must forge bonds stronger than the blood they don't share. Fatin Abbas weaves a story of Sudan's partition into the fabric of her characters identities while exploring the porous and perilous nature of borders. Ghost Season is a gripping, must-have debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, this discovery foreshadows more trouble to come.
Everyone has a different story. William, a South Sudanese translator, connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a nomad from the north with whom he's fallen in love. Amidst the chaos, Dena, a Sudanese-American filmmaker, struggles to find a connection with her homeland. There is Alex, a white aid worker from the American Midwest whose plans in the country are derailed by a rapidly changing climate and an impending civil war. And then there is Mustafa, a precocious twelve-year-old boy, whose plans to escape poverty set off a series of cataclysmic events on the compound.
Living in a Sudan riven by conflict presents challenges for William, Layla, Dena, Alex and Mustafa. To overcome them, they must forge bonds stronger than the blood they don't share. Fatin Abbas weaves a story of Sudan's partition into the fabric of her characters identities while exploring the porous and perilous nature of borders. Ghost Season is a gripping, must-have debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
Reviews / Votes
Ghost Season is a gripping debut from Fatin Abbas about the porous and perilous nature of human made borders. * Chicago Review of Books * With supreme skill and reverence, capturing shards, stillness and chaos, Fatin Abbas delivers a novel that gallops close and parallel to current events in Sudan. The most vivid of images, the most likable of characters - Ghost Season is a compelling, detailed portrait of humanity under threat from war, climate change and personal ambition. -- Leila Aboulela, author of River Spirit Ghost Season travels that narrow road between austere and gut-wrenching, and does it with incomparable grace. From the first words of this gorgeous novel to the last, Fatin Abbas holds us spellbound, immersed in the lives and the world that unfolds in its pages. Beyond the debris of war and displacement, she reminds us, rests something else that can never be truly extinguished: hope. -- Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize Immersive and astonishing, GHOST SEASON brings alive with brilliant specificity the South Sudanese border town of Saraaya, and an unforgettable cast of characters linked by circumstance and fate. Fatin Abbas is a remarkable writer, and this novel an extraordinary debut. -- Claire Messud, best-selling author of The Burning Girl and The Emperor's Children Utterly mesmerizing, and a brilliant depiction of the blurry psychological and physical borders that divide Sudan and South Sudan. An extremely promising and important first novel. -- Dave Eggers, author of The Every and What is the What A triumph of storytelling: richly imagined, finely wrought and filled with such vivid, wondrous characters. I finished this book and immediately wanted to read it again. Abbas is a writer of prodigious powers. -- Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, author of House of Stone a daring debut * New York Times * Abbas skillfully navigates boundaries between the disparate players and builds a fine drama out of their negotiations and bonds. Readers will be captivated by this immersive novel. * Publisher's Weekly * Abbas' first novel gets an A for its evocation of setting... * Booklist * Abbas adds just the right amount of sense of place to paint the scene and the cultures without letting it get in the way of her characters and their stories. Ghost Season is a wonderful debut from a truly talented writer. This is an author to watch and, above all, to read. -- Michael Sears * New York Journal of Books * [A] remarkable debut... The sense of place is powerful, the characters superbly drawn. -- Michael Sears * The Big Thrill *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 126 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
342 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-914344-77-0 (9781914344770)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Fatin Abbas' novel, GHOST SEASON, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton (US & Canada) and Jacaranda (UK) in 2023. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Freeman's, The Warwick Review, and Friction, and her journalism and review essays have appeared in Le Monde diplomatique, The Nation, Zeit Online, Africa is a Country, Bidoun, African Arguments and openDemocracy, among other places. She has been a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholar (UK), a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude and Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany), a Writer-in-Residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation (Switzerland), a Maison Baldwin St. Paul de Vence Writer-in-Residence (France), an Austrian Federal Chancellery/KulturKontakt Artist-in-Residence (Austria), as well as a Mophradat writing grant awardee. Born in Khartoum, Sudan and raised in New York, she gained her BA in English from the University of Cambridge, her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, the City University of New York, where she was awarded both the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize and the Miriam Weinberg Richter Award for her writing. In 2023, she will join the faculty of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT, where she will be teaching fiction writing.