"Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl" is a story told to an unspecified audience of the “traveled man,” the African who has returned from schooling abroad by an unnamed narrator. The narrator returns to his Sudanese village of "Wad Hamid" on the Nile in the 1950s after writing a doctoral thesis on ‘the life of an obscure English poet.’ Mustafa Sa'eed, the main protagonist of the novel, is a child of British colonialism, and a fruit of colonial education. He is also a monstrous product of his time.