Jamal Mahjoub was born in London in 1960. With an English mother and Sudanese father, he lived in Liverpool for the first few years of his life until his family moved back to his father's country of origin. Mahjoub attended a religious school in Khartoum and later got a scholarship that brought him back to England to study geology at the University of Sheffield.

Whilst he was still a student he started to publish his literary texts in magazines. After moving around several countries, northern Europe ended up being his home, although his African roots play a vital role in his books, providing adventures, history, science, superstition and at the same time speaking about the the conditions of life where people with very different ways of thinking live together and respect one another.

In the Hour of Signs, a book published in 1996, he tells the story of the British conquest at the end of the 19th century. The book transforms both the conflict's protagonists (The Muslim leader Mohammed Ahmed, called Mahdi, and the English General Gordon), into symbolic figures and converts farmers, shepherds or simple soldiers into the main actors, describing the uprising from the viewpoint of the farm-labourers or the colonial power's representatives.

Mahjoub also wrote the historical novel, The Carrier, published in 1998, which focuses on one of the most important moments in the European change of thinking: the telescope's evolvement together with the corresponding methods for astronomical calculation, which prepared the ground for our solar system's heliocentric vision and the definitive separation between science and religion. Mahjoub described his motivation to write this book in the question of why such a significant change of thinking in Europe did not have the same effect on the Muslim world.

Other books by Mahjoub have been:

Travelling with Djinns (2003), for which he received the d’Astrobale award  and the Guardian Heinemann African Short Story Prize. This book’s  Spanish edition can be requested on loan from Casa África, as it is part of their Media Library

Nubian Indigo (2006), whose story is set during the building of the Aswan Dam

The Drift Latitudes (2007) set in present day London

After having lived for many years in the Danish city of Aarhus, Mahjoub now lives in Barcelona. This great voyage of cities and cultures has given this author the versatility of being able to set his books in European and well as African settings. His books have been translated into several languages.

Jamal Mahjoub, inaugurated the 2011 edition of the programme African Letters by Casa África by visiting the cities of Barcelona and Valencia.

African Letters is a Casa África programme that was started in 2009 so as to bring the Spanish public closer to the main voices of contemporary African literature.