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Tayeb Salih, died in London on 18 February 2009, aged 80. His novel Season of Migration to the North was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics in 2001 as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century. The English translation by Denys Johnson-Davies was republished in 2003 in the Penguin Classics series. The work was translated into more than 20 languages.

Tayeb Salih was born in Northern Sudan in 1929 and educated at the University of Khartoum. He worked with UNESCO in Paris and was UNESCO's Representative in the Arab Gulf States. He studied in the UK and made it his home.

He was a very quiet and modest person, but among friends and colleagues the heart and soul of any occasion, ready with jokes, with recitals of works of classical Arab poets such as Abu Nawas, with anecdotes and wise words.