f a t i n a b b a s
GHOST SEASON: A NOVEL
A dynamic, beautifully orchestrated debut novel connecting five characters caught in the crosshairs of conflict on the Sudanese border.
A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese translator William connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a northern nomad with whom he’s fallen in love. Meanwhile, Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect to her unfamiliar homeland, and white midwestern aid worker Alex finds his plans thwarted by a changing climate and looming civil war. Dancing between the adults is Mustafa, a clever, endearing twelve-year-old, whose schemes to rise out of poverty set off cataclysmic events on the compound.
Amid the paradoxes of identity, art, humanitarian aid, and a territory riven by conflict, William, Layla, Dena, Alex, and Mustafa must forge bonds stronger than blood or identity. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders—whether they be national, ethnic, or religious—and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.
Praise for Ghost Season:
“Ghost Season travels that narrow road between austere and gut-wrenching, and does it with incomparable grace. From the first words of this gorgeous novel to the last, Fatin Abbas holds us spellbound, immersed in the lives and the world that unfolds in its pages. Beyond the debris of war and displacement, she reminds us, rests something else that can never be truly extinguished: hope.”
—MAAZA MENGISTE, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Shadow King
“Immersive and astonishing, Ghost Season brings alive with brilliant specificity the...Sudanese border town of Saraaya, and an unforgettable cast of characters linked by circumstance and fate. Fatin Abbas is a remarkable writer, and this novel an extraordinary debut.”
—CLAIRE MESSUD, best-selling author of The Burning Girl and The Emperor’s Children
“Utterly mesmerizing, and a brilliant depiction of the blurry psychological and physical borders that divide Sudan and South Sudan. An extremely promising and important first novel.”
—DAVE EGGERS, author of The Every and What is the What
“A triumph of storytelling: richly imagined, finely wrought and filled with such vivid, wondrous characters. I finished this book and immediately wanted to read it again. Abbas is a writer of prodigious powers.”
—NOVUYO ROSA TSHUMA, author of House of Stone
“With supreme skill and reverence, capturing shards, stillness and chaos, Fatin Abbas delivers a novel that gallops close and parallel to current events in Sudan. The most vivid of images, the most likeable of characters—Ghost Season is a compelling, detailed portrait of humanity under threat from war, climate change and personal amibition.”
—LEILA ABOULELA, author of River Spirit
“At the core of Abbas' novel…are those ethical questions that often help gird societal progress, including how we confront violence against women. Each character in the novel must grapple with the right thing to do, and given the stakes, the right thing to do is never easy in war, or after a fragile ceasefire.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[Abbas has] mastered the courage to dive deep into Sudan’s wounds and taboos…the stories of civilians in the grip of uncertainty make for a haunting account and a daring debut.”
—The New York Times
“Ghost Season is a wonderful debut from a truly talented writer. This is an author to watch and, above all, to read.”
—New York Journal of Books
BLACK TIME: SCRITTI SULL’INVISIBLE / ESSAYS ON THE INVISIBLE
Black Time (trans. Paolo Bassotti; Wetlands Books 2025) is a profound and original meditation born from the encounter between an Afro-descendant writer and the city of Venice. Through a journey across alleyways, islands, churches, and exhibitions, Venice becomes a portal through which Fatin Abbas reflects on today's major issues—from power dynamics between the Global North and South to the tragedies of war and genocide, from patriarchy to our relationship with nature and the environment, from cosmopolitanism to the frontlines of migration. She particularly focuses on the concept of time, in its various geographical and cultural dimensions.A book that guides us with clarity and grace through the thoughts of a new generation—the one that will shape our future. Second volume of the Afterwords series, curated and edited by Maaza Mengiste.
/about
Photo credit: Camilo Pachón
Fatin Abbas is the author of GHOST SEASON: A NOVEL (W.W. Norton/US & Canada; Jacaranda/UK, 2023; Rowohlt Berlin/Germany, 2024) and BLACK TIME: SCRITTI SULL’INVISBLE / ESSAYS ON THE INVISIBLE (Trans. Paolo Bassotti; Wetlands Books 2025). GHOST SEASON was longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, selected as one of the ‘Best African Books of 2023’ by African Arguments, as one of ‘100 Notable African Books of 2023’ by Brittle Paper, and as one of ‘Top 5 African Books of 2023’ by The Continent. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Freeman’s, The Warwick Review, and Friction, and her journalism and review essays have appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde diplomatique, The Nation, The Berlin Review, Zeit Online, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Africa is a Country, and openDemocracy, among other places. She has been a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholar (UK), a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude and Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany), a Writer-in-Residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation (Switzerland), a Maison Baldwin St. Paul de Vence Writer-in-Residence (France), and an Austrian Federal Chancellery/KulturKontakt Artist-in-Residence (Austria). Born in Khartoum, Sudan and raised in New York, she gained her BA in English from the University of Cambridge, her PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College, the City University of New York. She teaches fiction writing in the department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT.
/short fiction
‘The First Murder,’ MIT Tech
Review, Vol. 23, No. 5
‘On a Morning,’ Freeman’s: Arrival
‘Diminishing Returns,’
Granta 151