Place in a novel gains great importance as an essential technical element as well as the space in which events take place and the characters move. Beyond that, place also gets transformed in some outstanding works to a space that includes all the narrative elements, one that reveals the relationships between them and provides them with a climate in which they can interact and express a point of view. Descriptions are the first means of portraying place; they are an attempt to embody a scene of the external world in its various fields and types within a painting made of interwoven words.

This study deals with the space of the city in Tayeb Salih’s novel Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl [Season of Migration to the North] and discusses the term place in general and space in particular with regard to the novel. Place appears in Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl as the main component of the novel, with places interacting through the interaction of its characters who represent these places, thus reflecting the author’s narrative point of view so that semantic compatibility arises from three locations: the place, the framed space, and the open/expanded space. This study aims to understand these terms and their boundaries, to reveal the inner-city space (inside the Arab world) and the external space (outside the Arab world) as presented in this novel, and to analyze the relationship between the city’s space and other narrative elements (time and characters). The research also aims to shed light on the multiple connotations (i.e., intellectual philosophical, social, and human) the characters of the literary work highlight regarding place that imprint each place with its own characteristic and also goes through the dialectic relationship between place and the character to show the author’s vision in this narrative work and the conflict that is represented between the characters and places.

The research adheres to the descriptive analytical approach in presenting the places (i.e., the space of the city) in Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl while benefitting from the semiotic method view for explaining the signs and signals that occur to express a place or the connection a place has with its surroundings of time and characters, as well as its mechanisms starting from the lexical level and reaching to the semantic level.

The research includes three main headings. The first topic involves the places in the novel, the importance of places have, and the role of place in forming the idea or vision presented in the narrative or fictional text. The second topic is the space of the city in Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl, tracing the cities that are mentioned in detail as well as the most prominent places associated and related with the concept of the city, followed by accessing the revelations carried by these cities and their connotations. This then leads to the third topic, which is the relationship place (i.e., the city space) has with the two elements of the novel (i.e., time and personalities), wherein the relationship that combines the parts of the narrative work becomes clear in a comprehensive vision that gathers the fragments of this work within a single narrative fabric in a harmonious and compatible framework between all the elements of the narrative work. This is because time and place represent the inexhaustible organic unity in the novel, in addition to making memory the main reference when retrieving and narrating the past.

Among the most important results of this research is how the novel pays equal attention to the internal place (i.e., home) as well as the external place (alienation). The author was able to prove the idea that the place belongs to its inhabitants, and thus the dialectical relationship between the place and the characters in this novel is apparent and evident. This research also shows that having place be the hero of the story is possible in addition to being the cornerstone in the elements of the novel in line with the idea of conflict dominating the events of the novel. As for time, it was presented in the novel as a retrieval that always returns to the past, bringing one back to the origin of the story and the beginning of the conflict. The author also did not fail to establish a close relationship between the place and the woman with its complex connotations, some with the meaning of laying down roots, belonging, and homeland; others suggesting identification and symmetry; and others still reflecting negation and hostility. All this in addition to the author employing place (the space of the city) with regard to spreading his philosophy and making the place just like an arena of conflict between the East and West.