《风流赛义德》一个苏丹乡村的无名少年，自幼丧父，只有母亲和他相依为命。在学校，他凭着自己非凡的记忆力，很快就表现得出类拔萃，先后被送到开罗和伦敦深造，二十四岁就获得了牛津大学经济学博士学位并留在该校担任经济学讲师的职务。就是这么一个天赋过人的青年，却在花天酒地的生活中，变得风流不羁，先后招致了几个女性的死亡，因而被判处七年徒刑。刑满释放后，他浪迹各地，最后回到苏丹，在北部一个边远的村镇里定居下来，结了婚，生了两个孩子，生活过得很安适，同时也为乡亲们做了一些好事。然而因一次酒后失言念了一首英文诗，被迫讲出身世变故之后，便在那年尼罗河发水的季节里，以跳河自尽，了却了自己的一生。 《宰因的婚礼》主人公宰因这个发育不良、头脑简单的农村青年展开。这位主人公整天在村里东游西逛，看到谁家姑娘漂亮，就会一见钟情，并且从此到处宣扬他爱上了这位姑娘。在那保守的乡村里，谁家姑娘经他这么一嚷，便会芳名大振，以致远近闻名的乡绅、名流或风流少年闻风而来登门求亲，把她娶走。而这时宰因却毫不动心地去寻找新的目标，重新开始新的一轮爱情故事。这么年复一年地“传播爱情”，不断地让别人去收取他爱情的果实，但是他最后还是以自己的忠厚，善良赢得了堂妹尼阿玛的爱情。

After years of study in Europe, the young narrator of Season of Migration to the North returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan. It is the 1960s, and he is eager to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country. Back home, he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood—the enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. Mustafa takes the young man into his confidence, telling him the story of his own years in London, of his brilliant career as an economist, and of the series of fraught and deadly relationships with European women that led to a terrible public reckoning and his return to his native land. But what is the meaning of Mustafa’s shocking confession? Mustafa disappears without explanation, leaving the young man—whom he has asked to look after his wife—in an unsettled and violent no-man’s-land between Europe and Africa, tradition and innovation, holiness and defilement, and man and woman, from which no one will escape unaltered or unharmed. Season of Migration to the North is a rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.