al-riwā’ī (Ibrahim al-Asmar's Project of Novel). Numerous novelists like Ibrahim Ishaq, Jamal Mohammad Ibrahim, Al-Hasan Bakri (b. 1955) and others have focused on the coexistence of many diverse ethnic, cultural, religious, and linguistic groups living next to each other in Sudan. Another example is the Sudanese journalist and renowned poet across the Arabic literary world Muhammad al-Fayturi (1936–2015), whose extensive poetic work "particularly draws upon his experience as an African living among Arabs, and thus addresses issues such as race, class and colonialism." Resuming these recurrent literary topics, critic and translator of Sudanese novels Xavier Luffin made the following remark: "At the same time, none of these authors idealizes this richness, since they often quote the many problems faced by the marginalized, such as racism and civil war." Social and political themes In line with social and political developments in other countries at the time, stories, novels and poems dealing with social realist themes, like the conflicts between social classes were also written in Sudan. These were spurred on by Sudanese academics, who were returning home after studying in Egypt or European countries. After the 1990s, an increasing number of writers included social and political issues by choosing poor and marginalized people as major characters. Thus, Ibrahim Bashir Ibrahim (b. 1958) described people's lives in a suburban slum of Al-Obeid in his novel Al-Zindiyya (1995). Further novels dealing with people living in slums or with the shammasa (street boys) are Dhākirat shirrīr (2005, Memories of a Bad Boy) by Mansour El Souwaim and The Kandarees (2012) by Abdalaziz Baraka Sakin. In a general sense, "marginal characters became a real topos in Sudanese literature, because of their profession, often related to an ethnic origin: the Southern alcohol-seller, the Ethiopian prostitute, the West African healer, and so on. Depicted with empathy, they often play the role of rebels against the political and moral authorities." A number of authors writing stories with social and political contexts also have included explicit references to Sudan's failures of democracy. Thus, Ahmad al-Malik (b. 1967) presented a typical despot in his Al-Kharīf ya’tī ma‘a Ṣafā’ (2003) (Autumn Comes with Safā), which tells the story of a president through his own memories, "from his coming to power by chance to the eve of his disappearance." Al-Malik further included numerous details of life under dictatorship, "mixing them with fantasy, dream, and humor in a style that recalls magical realism",