At a time when Hollywood stars are leading the world in observing ‘Darfur Day’ to show solidarity with civilians in the war-torn region, the history of the Islamist movement in Sudan and its domination after the June 1989 military coup is revised again. This history has circulated around a single figure: the Sudanese intellectual and internationally known Hassan al-Turabi. While there are several biography-type works about Turabi, notably Abd al-Wahab al-Affendi's: Turabi's Revolution: Islam and state power in Sudan, this is not a biography of Hassan al-Turabi. Moreover, the issue of Sudan's devastating civil war with the South is excluded from the core of discussion (another volume by the same authors Requiem for the Sudan examines the theme).

Sudan in Turmoil: Hassan al-Turabi and the Islamist state is an update of the original 2003 volume with a new title and an additional chapter. In it the authors offer a multi-faceted scholarly analysis of Sudan's domestic and foreign policies during Turabi's decade-long era in power. It ranks as one of the best, most up-to-date, and comprehensive, studies on the subject. Millard Burr and the late Robert Collins have vast first-hand knowledge, stemming from different fields of engagement, academic disciplines and from direct personal involvement. Collins was an internationally acclaimed expert on Sudan, Africa, and the Nile River, while Burr is a former State Department official who served in Sudan as an aid logistics director. They generate a remarkable description of the functioning and principal characteristics of Turabi's National Islamic Front regime – the seventh to govern Sudan since independence in 1956, yet the first of a militantly Islamist nature.

Sudan in Turmoil illuminates less-known aspects of Sudan under Turabi; some topics read as if they were part of a novel. The ties between Turabi and Osama bin Laden, the Sudan–Iran friendship, Sudanese oil and China, Sudan and Carlos the Jackal, the plot to assassinate Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak, are part of the same puzzle and continue to influence (in one way or another) the political, economic and ideological position of Sudan in the world.

Burr and Collins have admirably used a wide range of sources to write a convincing study of a multi-layered, complex conflict, driven by leadership, tribal differences, race and religion, geopolitical players and international actors. Its sources are English- and French-language publications, including news wires and reports from diplomatic and human rights sources, as well as Arabic-language ephemera.

In this updated edition, the chapter entitled ‘The Mursid forsaken’ brings the story of Darfur as told from the perspective of Turabi's involvement in the region. It briefly describes Turabi's attempts to form an alliance with the disaffected minorities located in the periphery of the Sudanese state. As a result of these political manoeuvres and while Turabi started revealing secrets of the past, Turabi's London-based biographer al-Affendi clearly believes that ‘he should retire from political life if he is to have any chances of playing any indirect role in the future’.