Apart from poetry, the most prominent literary genre in Sudan is the short story. This form of writing started in the 1920s and was largely influenced by Arabic short stories in Egyptian newspapers. Tājouj (1948), a romantic love story by Osman Muhammad Hashim (1897–1981), has been called the first Sudanese novel. Since the period preceding the independence of Sudan in 1956, short stories and novels have dealt with political and social issues, as well as with the question of the country's complex cultural identity. This central theme of what it means to be Sudanese is marked in more or lesser degrees by both African roots as well as by Arabic cultural influences. This multiple cultural identity also gave the name to a group of writers of the 1960s, comprising Al-Nur Osman Abkar, Mohammed Abdul-Hayy, Ali El-Makk and Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, called The Jungle and Desert School (madrasat al-ghāba wa-l-ṣaḥrā’), where "jungle" stands for the rainforests of the South and "desert" refers to northern Sudan. Sudan's hybrid identity has been reflected in numerous literary works since then. Some authors such as Ḥāmid Badawī (b. 1956),have chosen literary characters and places from various regions, others wrote about families with members from different ethnic backgrounds or about people displaced from rural origins to the larger cities. Apart from poetry, the most prominent literary genre in Sudan is the short story. This form of writing started in the 1920s and was largely influenced by Arabic short stories in Egyptian newspapers. Tājouj (1948), a romantic love story by Osman Muhammad Hashim (1897–1981), has been called the first Sudanese novel. Since the period preceding the independence of Sudan in 1956, short stories and novels have dealt with political and social issues, as well as with the question of the country's complex cultural identity. Sudan's hybrid cultural identity This central theme of what it means to be Sudanese is marked in more or lesser degrees by both African roots as well as by Arabic cultural influences. Since The Jungle and Desert School, numerous other writers have included this hybrid identity in their narratives, either by choosing literary characters or places from different regions, such as Abkar Adam Isma‘il (b. 1965), who originates from Kordofan, in his novel Aḥlām fī bilād al-shams (Dreams in the Land of the Sun). Authors like Hamid Badawi (b. 1956) included references to intermarriages between Arabs and Africans in his Mashrū‘ Ibrāhīm al-Asmar