Samahani included in The Irish Times roundup of the best translated fiction of 2024

Irish Times critic Declan O'Driscoll writes “A more thoroughgoing account of a historical era's devastating impact on an overlooked society is explored in Samahani by Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, translated by Mayada Ibrahim and Adil Babikir (Foundry Editions, 216pp, £12.99) Here, the wish for power, control and wealth - with all the allied abuse this necessitates - is passed from Portuguese colonisers to Omani invaders and British imperialists. Central to the novel is the reign of Sultan Suleiman bin Salim who allied himself with the man nicknamed Tippu Tip, one of the most brutal of slave traders. The "skin-burning, flogging and solitary confinement" that they practice leads to a rebellion during which the Sultan's daughter is captured and brought to a village with her eunuch slave, Sondus. The surprising relationship that had already begun to develop between them flourishes in this setting. Presumptuous British forces are next to take over the territory, freeing slaves but creating new forms of exploitative structures. What is less expected is how the general mess of history becomes shockingly specific at the denouement of this finely structured, fascinating novel.”