engage only at the level of cosmetic crisis management,” rewarding the NCP “for a half-hearted implementation” of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). In a November 14, 2013, interview, Haj-Omar noted that the “level of participation” in recent Sudan protests had “shocked the government,” because what had been “a youth-based protest movement” was now “a grassroots movement throughout the country,” with higher anger levels. “They thought they could scare people by using violence, but it turned out this really angered people,” she said. “The real triumph of Sudan’s regime,” Haj-Omar wrote in March 2014, “has been that it has disconnected citizens by making their stories invisible to each other, and hence their suffering is also diminished; and with that our collective humanity. We therefore need a national exercise in regaining our humanity and recognizing the other. And this cannot be done without giving marginalized groups, and especially those enduring state-sponsored wars, the space to tell their narratives in the way they choose to.” She said that this aspect of the Sudanese struggle “is where we part ways with the recent revolutions in the Arab region,” because there is “an ethnic/racial divide is unique to Sudan.” Thus “the biggest challenge facing today’s generation of changemakers is how to create an inclusive pro-democracy movement that addresses the grievances of all Sudanese rather than falling hostage to rigid ideological and sometimes utopian thinking.” Book reviews and commentary On May 23, 2013, she reviewed Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah, saying that it would “strike a chord with a wide range of readers because it defines the psyche of multiple generations from the African continent – from our own Sudan, including those who left, those who stayed and those who returned after long years abroad.” In a July 2013 review of Amir Ahmad Nasr's book My Isl@m: How Fundamentalism Stole My Mind-and Doubt Freed My Soul, Haj-Omar called it an example of the fact that a new generation in Sudan was finally discussing “the relationship between Islam and identity.” Noting his discussion of how an Islam of “reason” and “free will” lost out to an Islam of “tradition” and Qur'anic literalism, she called his book “a gift to the generation that grew under the darkness of Sudan's murderous regime (whether inside or outside Sudan), the National Congress Party. It is a song to freedom of expression, freedom of thought and critical inquiry, and freedom