Whose Othello Are We Talking About Anyway?

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that Tayeb Salih, in his most famous novel, tackles Shakespeare's best-known play in the Arabic world, Othello, but not in the usual fashion. Instead of adapting the protagonist, Salih ventriloquises him to force a fresh understanding of Othello by Western readers, thus challenging what was at the time of his novel's publication a largely nineteenth-century reading of Othello. At the same time, Salih creates a hybridised protagonist of his own, one who comes to understand that he is neither Sudanese nor English. This reading thus sheds light on both Shakespeare's play and Salih's novel, arguing that the novel allows us to understand the play contextually rather than anachronistically. Fundamentally, Salih destabilises Arab notions of identity, arguing that the world has become ‘all mixed up’ and needs to move beyond essentialist identities.