I have often noticed that whenever one hears about “Africa,” whether on the news, or in music, or in arts, or in literature, the inevitable focus is always the portion of the continent that is geographically south of the Sahara desert. For instance, the “plight of Africa,” that favourite headline of European and American newspapers, usually refers to AIDS or child soldiers or foreign debt or whatever new cause hipsters find fit to embrace at the moment. When African music is written about outside of the continent, it is usually in terms of Youssou N’Dour, or Fela Kuti or Miriam Makeba. African art, as curated in places like The Metropolitan Museum in New York, means only artwork produced south of Senegal to the west and Sudan to the east.

I have also noticed that those of us from the Northern parts of the continent are regularly thrust under the headings of “Arab” and “Islam,” to the exclusion of all others. For example, many political problems in North Africa are explained entirely in terms of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The art of North Africa can be found generally in the Islamic or Middle Eastern sections of museums. The music is talked about exclusively in terms of its Arab influences. I once heard a TV commentator bemoan the phenomenon of Moroccan hip hop and proclaim Umm Kulthum’s melodies to be the only ‘real’ music. As for North African literature, it is usually placed under the heading of Arab literature in any library or bookstore.

So it seems that North Africa is excluded—and occasionally also excludes itself—from considerations of Africa, in all its wondrous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural diversity. In this issue of Farafina magazine, I want to reclaim North Africa for Africa. In his article “Remapping Africanness”, the novelist and academic Anouar Majid shows how North African and sub-Saharan novels in fact share many common themes and concerns. The Rabat-based lawyer and activist Karim Kettani writes about a forgotten chapter of African history—a time when people across the continent shared the same political goals. I am also delighted to include Nouri Gana’s review of Nouri Bouzid’s Akher Film. Professor Waïl Hassan has kindly allowed this magazine to reproduce his introduction to the new African Writers Series edition of Tayib Salih’s masterpiece, Season of Migration to the North. The featured fiction in this issue is an excerpt from Hisham Matar’s novel, In The Country of Men, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006. Mathew Shenoda has contributed a lovely poem, and Hoda Mana, Simona Schneider and Alex Yera have supplied the many photographs.

Lastly, I am thrilled to include work by the artist Lalla Essaydi, whose pictures rework Orientalist clichés in order to challenge the stereotypes they present.

I hope that these contributions serve as an introduction or a re-introduction to the art, culture, and literature of North Africa.