ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interplay of cosmopolitanism, colonialism, and nationalism as it unfolds in two novels written at different junctures of the Sudan’s history. Like Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, Leila Aboulela’s Lyrics Alley attends to the conflict between generationally specific forms of cosmopolitanism, although she takes a somewhat different path. In Lyrics Alley, Mahmoud and Nabilah are spared from experiencing a similar psychological turmoil because they lack the required intellectual depth. The universal and inclusive values associated with cosmopolitanism in the West are thus undermined “by the systematic and sustained political exclusion of various groups and ‘types’ of people”. As Tim Brennan observes, cosmopolitanism is “an unlikely entryway” into current debates about equality and justice between the global north and the south, and the boundaries between national sovereignty and globalization. According to Aboulela, the dynamic between cosmopolitanism, progress, and modernity cannot be limited to buying and wearing European brands.
