which helps the author to avoid censorship. Another novel dealing with dictatorship is Waṭan khalf al-quḍbān (2002) (A Nation behind Bars) by Khālid ‘Uways (b. 1972). Here, the writer does not dwell explicitly on the dictator, but most of all on the system and its victims: His main characters are two women in jail, Rābi‘a and Mary, an educated artist from the North and a servant from the South of the country. By narrating their lives in jail and in the outside world, the novel describes a host of negative influences employed by the regime against its own people. By the characters of Rābi‘a and Mary, ‘Uways shows "that the victims of the regime are both Africans and Arabs, non-Muslims and Muslims." Similar recurrent themes are the "undeniable and long history of conflict and political turbulence", caused by authoritarian governments, for example in the political poems of Mahjoub Sharif, violent clashes between militias and impoverished human beings in Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin's novels or discrimination and violence against women, told by female authors like Rania Mamoun or Stella Gaitano. Among contemporary Sudanese poets, Mahjoub Sharif is remembered for his poems "for freedom, full with music, witty, agitating, but always didactic." As critic Magdi El Gizouli wrote in his obituary about Sharif: "A school teacher by training, this secular prophet spoke truth to power in a creative language that readily transformed into powerful memes, and as a consequence landed him habitually in the detention cells of Sudan's military rulers." Political discrimination has also affected the Sudanese Writers Union, which was founded in 1985 in order to promote freedom of expression and to bring together writers of different cultural groups. It was dissolved by the military government of Omar al-Bashir in 1989 and could only be revived from 2006 onwards. After ten years of activities in the general context of suppression of free expression, it was closed down again in 2015, but upon a court ruling in 2016, the Union managed to resume its activities. - In 2015, poet Mamoun Eltlib and others started a monthly street market for used books called Mafroosh, meaning “spread out” or “display”, attracting many young people looking for books. But a short time later, these informal meetings were also banned by the government. Publishing and distributing books also suffered greatly from the government's neglect and censorship, which also led to the circulation of illegal copies. According to