Letters from Khartoum is a partial biography of Scottish educator, D.R. Ewen, who taught English Literature at the University of Khartoum from the time of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium through to Independence and the October 1964 Revolution. The administrative history of the then unified nation – North (Middle Eastern) and South (African) – makes the Sudan a unique setting to explore the workings of colonial education. The purpose of teaching English literature there was to remake the Muslim Sudanese of the North as the proxy agents of British culture who would administrate the first independent nation in Africa. But Ewen also was remade in the process – by his relationships with his students and colleagues, and by his own teaching innovations.
