Amir Tag Elsir: “Sometimes I feel exhausted and decide to stop writing, but I never manage to”

Sudanese physician and novelist Dr. Amir Tag Elsir (born 1960) began his literary journey with poetry before moving decisively into prose. Over the decades, he has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Arabic literature. His work is known for blending Sudanese social reality with elements of the uncanny and the grotesque, rendered in a compact, highly personal language and supported by a solid narrative architecture. His stories grow organically, one from another, forming a coherent literary world.

This talent first became widely visible with his debut novel Karmakol, published in 1988 while he was studying medicine in Cairo. The novel announced the arrival of a major novelist, not only in Sudan but across the Arab world.

Tag Elsir’s novels have attracted sustained critical and literary attention. The Grub Hunter was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Arab Booker) in 2011, while 360 longlisted in 2014. The French Perfume won an international award for best novel translated into English. His novel 366 received the Katara Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2015, and Flowers in Flames was shortlisted for the Arab Booker in 2018.

With more than twenty-five books to his name, his body of work includes novels such as A Sky the Color of Sapphire, The Fire of Ululations, Coastal Mirrors, The Biography of Pain, Sympathy, The Migrant’s Eyes, The Yelling Dawry, The March of Ants, The Copt’s Tensions, The Land of Sudan: Sweet and Bitter, Ebola 76, Ritual, and Desire, among many others.

The author often says that he found his true calling in the novel. Though he sometimes feels exhausted and considers retirement, he has never been able to stop writing. In this exclusive interview for Geeska, Sudanese novelist and physician Amir Tag Elsir discusses his literary journey, the persistence of Sudanese identity amid crisis, and the role of fiction in reaching readers across languages and borders.

Latifa Mohamed Hasib Al-Qadi: Sudan in your novels appears not merely as a geographic space but as an existential condition. Your work moves beyond the conventional Sudanese novel rooted in post-colonial critique. In the context of war, displacement, and today’s humanitarian crisis in the country, how does the Sudanese individual preserve their human essence?

Dr. Amir Tag Elsir: Sudan is a vast and great country with an ancient civilization, a rich and a well-known culture, and deep layers of mythology and popular rituals. Anyone born and raised in Sudan absorbs all of this. No matter what happens to the geographical country, the symbolic or inner Sudan remains alive within the person. Even without war or displacement, the migrant never forgets their homeland.

That is why our songs are steeped in longing, and our writing returns again and again to both the good days and the bad, to sweetness and bitterness alike, as I expressed in The Land of Sudan. Today, some things have changed. Perhaps the harshness of time has stretched further than deeply rooted beliefs, and we may notice slight changes in the Sudanese character. Everyone is searching for life, searching for hope. Still, the situation is not dangerous overall (to the inner Sudan). The inner Sudan is still there, searching for the geographical Sudan, waiting for life to return to what it once was.

L. A-Q: Do the doctor’s scalpel and the novelist’s pen ever meet?

A. T-E: I studied medicine and reconciled it with literature, which has been my passion since childhood. When I am working as a doctor, I do not think about writing. On the other hand, when I am writing, I forget that I am a doctor. It is a beautiful overlap, with nothing negative about it. Medicine often enriches my writing, and sometimes I draw directly on medical knowledge, as I did in Ebola 76 (2012), The Biography of Pain (2001), and other works.

L. A-Q: What do you think creative writing offers the writer in the Arab and global literary scene?

A. T-E: Any novelist whose work reaches Arab and international spaces adds something new to the literary landscape. I believe the greatest gift of creative writing is that it takes the writer to places they could never reach otherwise. I have readers in Poland, China, and Turkey who write to me, something I never imagined would happen.

There are many writers who have reached the global stage and earned respect, such as Tarek Eltayeb, Baraka Sakin, and Hammour Ziada. These are writers who have something to say, and the world listens quietly and attentively.

L. A-Q.: Sudanese literature has long been treated as marginal in the Arab cultural sphere. To what extent has “Sudanese-ness,” with its Arab-African hybridity, shaped the reception of Sudanese writing by traditional Arab critics?

A. T-E.: Today, Sudanese literature is no longer marginal or faint-voiced as it once was. Sudanese writers, even those still publishing with Sudanese presses, can now reach readers everywhere through social media. Publishing houses have also moved beyond local isolation and participate in book fairs across the region. So, we can no longer say Sudanese literature is unknown or peripheral. That idea has completely collapsed.

L. A-Q: In A Nakedness Next Door, you return to writing about the Sudanese countryside after a long absence. Through the character of “the Naked One,” how did you expose a society that appeared morally concealed?

A. T-E: It was an attempt to root both good and evil there. The Naked One is not Saeed Al-Warraq or the free dog itself, but rather the major conflict that accompanied its emergence and helped ignite it. A society that appeared morally covered no longer is. I do not know the full scale of the destruction, but I arrived at a formulation that stripped the society bare, without covering.

L. A-Q: Your novel Ebola 76 seemed to anticipate the absurdity of mass death years before recent global pandemics. Was the novel meant as awareness, or merely a narrative frame for suspense?

A.T-E: Epidemics have always existed. They flare up and fade away. They are part of life’s inevitable cycle that ends in death. No one escapes that end. When a virus awakens, it sharpens endings brutally. Hemorrhagic fever did appear and killed thousands, destroying hopes and ambitions. We all lived through COVID-19 and saw what it did, losing many loved ones. This is not nature protesting. It is a shocking reality that will remain. Other viruses will also emerge as long as life exists.

L. A-Q: Your language leans toward the uncanny with unfamiliar characters. Does this require an unusual narrative structure? And how is this often received?

A.T-E: Since I began writing, I have written in this language, one that draws heavily on poetry. I never fabricated strangeness. This is simply my style. My sentences will not pass quietly or ordinarily, and my characters will not be familiar. I rely on a perhaps unconventional architecture. Some readers appreciate this, others prefer what is ordinary and familiar. In the end, I say what I want to say. And I am happy that this approach did not prevent my work from being translated into many languages or included in educational curricula.

L. A-Q: In The Pressure and Intoxication of Writing, you spoke about the pain of literary creation. After more than twenty-five works, has writing healed the doctor Amir Tag Elsir?

A.T-E: I have loved writing since primary school. I loved books and still read with the same passion I had as a teenager. When I began writing creative texts, I did so with a proficiency that had satisfied me. Even the songs I wrote, I tried to make distinctive. Then came the novel, where I truly found my missing piece. Sometimes I feel exhausted and decide to stop, but I never manage to.

L. A-Q: The Grub Hunter reached the Arab Booker shortlist in 2011. In it the protagonist, Abdullah Farfour, moves from being a spy to becoming a writer. How did you come up with such character?

A.T-E: The novel was inspired by a real person and a real incident that I have mentioned often, the security vehicle accident involving Farfour and two colleagues. With a solid idea and a strong beginning, the writing became easier. I pushed the story toward satire, especially by linking the character to writing. The security recruit who lay with us in the surgical ward knew nothing about literature. I am the one who connected him to it in the novel.

L. A-Q: In 366, we see love and crime intertwine. Do you think love and evil as two sides of the same coin?

A.T-E: Not necessarily. Usually, good follows its path and evil follows its own. This novel was exhausting and deeply affecting. I once said I regretted writing it. Yet it remains one of my brightest works. Its translation into Chinese brought me great joy, and I received positive messages from Chinese readers.

L. A-Q: Staying with your fiction, in The Yelling Dawry you weave together fantasy, myth, and popular ritual practices. Now that the novel has been translated into English, how do you see these elements traveling across languages and cultures, and what do they reveal about the world you are trying to build?

A.T-E: It is a very important novel in my career. I completed it in 2002, and it remains one of the novels that addressed oppression in all its forms. Despite its fantasy and mythological elements, it is a clear and readable text. When translated into English, some said it was the Arabic equivalent of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

L. A-Q: You once wrote on Facebook that despite all the novels, travel, smiles, and frowns, you still want to write. What remains unwritten?

A.T-E: Honestly, I do not know. I am always ready to write. The more I read, the more I want to write. I have ideas, characters waiting their turn, cities I visited and loved. I have much that I might write, and much that I might erase from memory. My preoccupations are many.

L. A-Q: Silence often dominates your characters, as if it hides entire stories. What can silence say when words fail?

A.T-E: That is true. Even in daily life, we sometimes find expansive sentences in silence, especially when we sense a story behind it. I have written about this, including the silent political informant whose silence produced an entire report in The Grub Hunter.

L. A-Q: Port Sudan was once elegant and alluring. Now it has changed. Is the city a mirror of the self, or the self a mirror of the city?

A.T-E: Each reflects the other. We draw inspiration from the city, and the city sees and inspires us. I wrote about Port Sudan in The Biography of Coastal Mirrors, then rewrote it as Whispers of Houses and Streets. Port Sudan inspires me at all times.

L. A-Q: What obsession drives your prolific output?

A.T-E: I have a project, not just isolated writing. You may find me publishing a novel every year, each with its own idea and narrative method. I have never written outside this project.

L. A-Q: In A Sky the Color of Sapphire, the narrative is saturated with visual imagery. How do you see the relationship between poetic language and novelistic structure?

A.T-E: For me, it is an intimate relationship. Poetry is a powerful tool when used carefully in prose. It shapes images, builds worlds, and adds rich seasoning. In Karmakol, A Sky the Color of Sapphire, and The Fire of Ululations, poetic language was used excessively and it spoiled the texts. However, after much effort, I reached the stylistic balance I write with today.

L. A-Q: Nar Al-Zagharid (Fire of Ululations) deals with popular rituals. Was it meant as social critique or a mere documentation of the Sudanese reality?

A.T-E: It was an early novel. Honestly, I barely remember what I wrote in it. I may return to it one day, as I did with works like The Migrant’s Howl and The Hadrami Hunt.

L. A-Q : You won the Katara Prize in 2015 for 366. What do awards mean to you?

A.T-E: Awards matter. They are recognition for years of work. The more prizes there are in the Arab world, the more creatives are honored. But some write only to win prizes, without insight or talent. That, of course, is well known.