Arab novelist Tayeb Salih dies in London

Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih, one of the most respected Arab novelists of the 20th century, has died in London where he spent most of his life, one of his friends said yesterday.
Salih, who wrote the classic "Season of Migration to the North" about a Sudanese man's experiences of life and love in Britain in the 1960s, died on Tuesday night, aged 80, his friend Ali Mahdi told AFP.
Born in a village in northern Sudan in 1929, Salih studied in Britain where he went on to work for the BBC's Arabic service as well as for the UN's cultural organisation UNESCO in Paris.
Published in the late 1960s, "Season of Migration to the North" was banned by Sudan's Islamist regime in the 1990s because of its descriptions of a Sudanese intellectual's sexual experiences in Britain.
The Damascus-based Arab Literary Academy in 2001 declared the book "the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century."
His works were translated into more than 20 languages.