Hamid Dirar | The Amulet

323 pages. Map. Genealogy. Glossary. Gazetteer. ISBN 978-1-9160783-1-4  

“It was my early existence as a nomad, harsh and sweet by turns, that made me what I am,”  writes Hamid Dirar. ”Under my lab overalls, my early life in nomad encampments is inscribed on every part of my body: a dog’s bite; a scar left by the slash of a cutlass; and scores of cuts and burns intended to cure the illnesses of childhood….”

The Amulet is the story of a boy’s pursuit of knowledge in a world of sheikhs and matriarchs, camel-raiders, poets and night-hunters. In Hamid Dirar’s mesmerising account of a pastoralist society in mid-twentieth century Sudan, we are transported to his ancestral homeland in the far north – Nubia, the land of rocks – then south to the seasonal settlements in the Butana, an endless grass plain close by the Ethiopian border. It’s a realm of violence and beauty, famine and plenitude, with its own laws, where the modern world is a distant speck on the horizon – until a military coup in the capital, Khartoum, transforms the author’s life and the political future of Sudan. 

Hamid Dirar is the author of the classic The Indigenous Fermented Foods of the Sudan. A world-renowned biochemist, his early life was as a nomadic camel-keeper in Eastern Sudan, near the border with Ethiopia. Hamid Dirar died on 23 April 2023 at his home in Khartoum.

Published 2022