Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin was born in the Sudanese town of Kassala, but the roots of his family go back to Darfur in western Sudan. He graduated in business administration from the University of Assiut in Egypt, and has exercised many professional activities during his life: as manual worker, secondary school teacher, consultant for UNICEF in Darfur, or as employee of an NGO in Sudan.

His literary work, which includes references to the Darfur genocide and the dictatorship in Sudan, is published in Arabic in Egypt and Syria. It is very popular with Sudanese readers, who have been smuggling his books into their country, since their interdiction by the Sudanese authorities.[3]

In 2009, he received the prestigious Tayeb Salih Prize at the Khartoum Book Fair for his novel The Jungo – Stakes of the Earth, and that deals with the conditions in a women's prison. Shortly after its release, the Sudanese authorities confiscated and banned his books.[4] In 2012, Baraka Sakin left Sudan, seeking exile in Austria, where he has lived since 2012.

In 2016, his novel The Messiah of Darfur was published in a French translation, followed by Les Jango in 2020.[5] In France, he also published children's books as a multilingual edition in Arabic, English and French.[6]

Several of his short stories have been published also in German translations.[7] In September 2016, he was invited to the German capital Berlin as participant of its International Festival of Literature,[7] and in 2019 to the Festival of African Literature Crossing Borders in Cologne, Germany.[8]

Baraka Sakin has written for several Arabic-language magazines: Al Arabi Magazine (Kuweit), Al Naqid (London), Nazwa magazine (Oman), Journal of Palestinian Studies (Paris, in French), Doha Magazine (UAE), Banipal (London),[9] or Dastoor Newspaper (London).

(all titles given in English translation)

Novels

• The Mills, Vision Publishing, Cairo, 2000
• The Water Ashes, Vision Publishing, Cairo, 2001
• The Husband of the Bullet Woman and My Beautiful Daughter, Vision Publishing, Cairo, 2003
• The Bedouin Lover, Vision Publishing, Cairo, 2010
• The Jungo – Stakes of the Earth, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2009 English translation: The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth. (2015). Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, Inc., Trenton, NJ, USA. ISBN 9781569024249 French translation: Les Jango, Éditions Zulma, Paris, France, 2020, ISBN 978-2-84304-846-3
• The Messiah of Darfur, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2012 French translation: Le Messie du Darfour, Éditions Zulma, Paris, France, 2016, ISBN 9782843047794

Short stories

• At the Peripheries of Sidewalks, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2005
• A Woman from Kampo Kadees, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2005 published in French as Une femme du camp de Kadis, in Nouvelles du Soudan, Magellan & Cie, 2010
• The Daily remains of the Night, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2010
• The Music of the Bones, Awraq Publishing House, Cairo, 2011
• The Butcher's Daughter, in The Book of Khartum, anthology of short stories, Comma Press, UK 2016

• Al-Malik, A., Gaetano, S., Adam, H., Baraka, S. A., Karamallah, A., Mamoun, R., & Luffin, X. (2009). Nouvelles du Soudan. Paris: Magellan & Cie. ISBN 9782350741604
• Cormack, Ralph and Shmookler, Max (eds.) (2016). The Book of Khartoum. A City in Short Fiction. ISBN 9781905583720
• Banipal Magazine. Sudanese literature today. 2016.

• Sudanese literature
• List of Sudanese writers

• Abelaziz Baraka Sakin at Commapress publishers