Azib

Rania Mamoun  |  The AFAC Novel Writing Program  |  2015  |  Sudan
This is a metafictional novel that tells the story of a poet called Mona. Mona is haunted by creative anxiety and constantly moves from one artistic domain to another, hoping she can dwell in one of them. However, she feels that nothing can fulfill the artistic spirit inside of her, so she starts writing a novel about a mentally challenged girl who imagines that she has died and is living in the otherworld, treats herself and others according to her illusion, and describes details about the otherworld, as seen by her imagination. She suddenly stops writing when she meets in reality a character that exactly resembles one of the characters in her novel. She falls in love with “Azib,” an Eritrean girl, discovers her homosexual desire towards her and finds a hard time getting rid of her feelings. She experiences a violent inner conflict before settling on a final decision