The Last Sultan

Mansour Mohamad El Souwaim  |  Literature  |  2011  |  Sudan
The Last Sultan is a narrative historic work that tackles the history of Darfur during the end of the Turkish era and the beginning of English-Egyptian rule. The story unfolds around the life of the main character, Sultan Ali Dinar of Darfur, while also using that narrative as a platform for offering a creative survey of the artistic, societal, and historical developments of Sudan at the turn of the 19th century. The tale begins in 1898, with the quelling of the Mahdi revolts and the penetration of Sudan by British forces up until Sultan Ali’s murderous end at the hands of the British in 1916 after having at last succeeded in re-establishing his ancestral kingdom. He is therefore at once both the first and the last of the sultans of this era