Tayeb Salih or Al-Tayyib Salih (Arabic: الطيّب صالح‎) (1929 – 18 February 2009) was a Sudanese writer. Born in the Northern Province of Sudan, he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in agriculture. Except, however, for a brief spell as a schoolmaster before coming to England, his working life was in broadcasting.

His works are generally political, dealing with themes such as colonization and gender. Salih was also considered one of the best short story writers working in Arabic today.[citation needed] Having studied both western and Arab literature, philosophy, and society, Salih intermingles aspects of both cultures in his works.

Salih achieved immediate acclaim when his novel Season of Migration to the North was first published in Arabic, in Beirut in the late 1960s. In 2001, this was declared "the most important Arabic novel of the 20th century" by the Syrian-based Arab Literary Academy in Damascus. His works have been translated from Arabic into more than 20 languages.

'"Season of Migration to the North" is an Arabian Nights in reverse, enclosing a pithy moral about international misconceptions and delusions. The brilliant student of an earlier generation returns to his Sudanese village; obsession with the mysterious West and a desire to bite the hand that has half-fed him, has led him to London and the beds of women with similar obsessions about the mysterious East. He kills them at the point of ecstasy and the Occident, in its turn, destroys him. Powerfully and poetically written and splendidly translated by Denys Johnson-Davies' - "Observer".