Tayeb Salih was born in 1929 in Karmakol, a village on the bank of the Nile in the rural north of Sudan. He grew up in a community shaped by religious and agricultural traditions, moving to Sudan’s capital Khartoum as a young man to study for his degree at Gordon Memorial College (later the University of Khartoum). In 1952, he traveled to London and studied at the University of London, part of a cohort of Sudanese students educated in Britain as part of the transition to Sudanese independence in 1956.

Salih intended to return to farming in Sudan but instead began a career in journalism and settled in London. In 1956, he married a British woman. He wrote a weekly literary column for the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Majalla for a decade and worked for the BBC’s Arabic Service, becoming Director General of the Ministry of Information in Qatar. Toward the end of his career, he worked for UNESCO in Paris, holding various posts including representative for the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.

In parallel to his professional career, Salih published numerous literary works to critical acclaim. His most renowned work, Season of Migration to the North (1966), was immediately well-received and made him a prominent figure in Arabic literature and cultural exchange.