Letters from Khartoum is a partial biography of Scottish educator, D.R. Ewen, who taught English Literature at the University of Khartoum from the time of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium through to Independence and the October 1964 Revolution. The administrative history of the then unified nation – North (Middle Eastern) and South (African) – makes the Sudan a unique setting to explore the workings of colonial education. The purpose of teaching English literature there was to remake the Muslim Sudanese of the North as the proxy agents of British culture who would administrate the first independent nation in Africa. But Ewen also was remade in the process – by his relationships with his students and colleagues, and by his own teaching innovations.
Russell McDougall, Emeritus Professor, University of New England (Australia), has published widely on African, Australian and Caribbean Literatures. His most recent book, coedited with Anne Collett and Sue Thomas, is
Tracking the Literature of Tropical Weather: Typhoons, Hurricanes, and Cyclones (2017).
McDougall’s book defies easy generic classification; it draws upon a rich variety of primary and secondary sources: photographs and postcards; government and diplomatic papers; journalism, university archives, and scholarly literature; and, most importantly, Ewen’s own writings, which include lecture notes, diaries, poetry, and his voluminous correspondence – notably to his mother, Agnes. […]
Letters from Khartoum: D.R Ewen is a fascinating and rewarding read. The book makes an original and important con tribution to postcolonial studies, and it is to be hoped that subsequent volumes in the series Postcolonial Lives, of which
Letters from Khartoum, D.R Ewen is the inaugural volume, will further develop this refreshingly different perspective on the field.
- Jamie S. Scott,
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, September 2024.
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Text
Historical Nomenclature
List of Figures
Introduction
1951 – Native Quarter
1952 – Crossing the Bar
1953 – Serpent’s Tooth
1954 – Assassins at the Tea Party
1955 – Mutiny
1956 – Crisis
1957 – Birds over the Bottomless Lake
1958 – An End to Democracy
1959 – Bogged on the Runway
1960 – The Year of Africa
1961 – Cold War
1962 – Backwater Paradise
1963 – The Widening Gyre
1964 – Revolution
1965 – Leaving
Afterword
A Who’s Who of Ewen’s Sudan
Works Cited
Index
Students and scholars of English Literature, Postcolonial Literature and Cultural Studies, African and Middle Eastern History and Politics, Sudanese History (North and South), Colonial Education, Travel Writing and Life Writing.