It is the week before the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia. Kalaman, a successful young businessman in Mogadiscio receives an unexpected house guest—the wild and sexually adventurous Sholoongo, his childhood crush returned from America. She announces that she intends to have his baby. Confronted by this dangerous interruption from his past, Kalaman starts to investigate his family's history, and uncovers the startling key to his own conception. Hailed by Salman Rushdie as "one of the finest contemporary African novelists," Farah writes in a rhythmical, sensual prose reminiscent of García Márquez's best fiction. Evoking the beauty and tragedy of Africa, Secrets is a remarkable portrait of a family disintegrating like its country, its ties dissolved by exposed lies and secrets.

Secrets

Literature & Fiction

Farah, Nuruddin

Contemporary

Penguin??Books

Gifts is a beguiling tale of a Somali family, its strong matriarch, Duniya, and its past wounds that refuse to heal. As the story unfolds, Somalia is ravaged by war, drought, disease, and famine, prompting industrialized nations to offer monetary aid—"gifts" to the so-called Third World. Farah weaves these threads together into a tapestry of dreams, memories, family lore, folktales, and journalistic accounts.

Gifts

This first novel in Nuruddin Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy tells the story of Askar, a man coming of age in the turmoil of modern Africa. With his father a victim of the bloody Ethiopian civil war and his mother dying the day of his birth, Askar is taken in and raised by a woman named Misra amid the scandal, gossip, and ritual of a small African village. As an adolescent, Askar goes to live in Somalia's capital, where he strives to find himself just as Somalia struggles for national identity.

Maps

From the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip—his last residence there was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom. Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother’s grave, Jeebleh is asked to investigate the abduction of the young daughter of one of his closest friend’s family. But he learns quickly that any act in this city, particularly an act of justice, is much more complicated than he might have imagined.

Links: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

United States

Penguin Publishing Group

Written with complete conviction from a woman's point of view, Nuruddin Farah's spare, shocking first novel savagely attacks the traditional values of his people yet is also a haunting celebration of the unbroken human spirit. Ebla, an orphan of eighteen, runs away from her nomadic encampment in rural Somalia when she discovers that her grandfather has promised her in marriage to an older man. But even after her escape to Mogadishu, she finds herself as powerless and dependent on men as she was out in the bush. As she is propelled through servitude, marriage, poverty, and violence, Ebla has to fight to retain her identity in a world where women are "sold like cattle."

From a Crooked Rib

Riverhead Books

From the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn comes "a beautiful, hopeful novel about one woman's return to war-ravaged Mogadishu" (Time) Called "one of the most sophisticated voices in modern fiction" (The New York Review of Books), Nuruddin Farah is widely recognized as a literary genius. He proves it yet again with Knots, the story of a woman who returns to her roots and discovers much more than herself. Born in Somalia but raised in North America, Cambara flees a failed marriage by traveling to Mogadishu. And there, amid the devastation and brutality, she finds that her most unlikely ambitions begin to seem possible. Conjuring the unforgettable extremes of a fractured Muslim culture and the wayward Somali state through the eyes of a strong, compelling heroine, Knots is another Farah masterwork.

Knots: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

Humor & Satire

A gripping new novel from today's "most important African novelist" (The New York Times Book Review), the internationally acclaimed author of North of DawnA dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing whips.
Meanwhile, Malik's brother, Ahl, has arrived in Puntland, the region notorious as a pirates' base. Ahl is searching for his stepson, Taxliil, who has vanished from Minneapolis, apparently recruited by an imam allied to Somalia's rising religious insurgency. The brothers' efforts draw them closer to Taxliil and deeper into the fabric of the country, even as Somalis brace themselves for an Ethiopian invasion. Jeebleh leaves Mogadiscio only a few hours before the borders are breached and raids descend from land and sea. As the uneasy quiet shatters and the city turns into a battle zone, the brothers experience firsthand the derailments of war.
Completing the trilogy that began with Links and Knots, Crossbones is a fascinating look at individuals caught in the maw of zealotry, profiteering, and political conflict, by one of our most highly acclaimed international writers.

Crossbones: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (Literature, Culture, and Identity)

The story of the international refugees created by the political tyranny of post-colonial Somalia. The author, an established Somali novelist who went into exile as a form of protest, has interviewed Somalis in Africa and Europe to provide this portrait of how people react, are wounded, how they survive, change and even thrive when they flee their homes and are turned into refugees. It shows how the refugees see themselves and how the host countries treat refugees. It reveals how refugees have adapted, or failed to adapt, to different countries and how their lives became disrupted and recreated as a result of politics and economics. Although it focuses on a particular people, the work should help readers to understand the experiences of people forced by mass migrations to live fragmented lives in the post-modern era of rapid change.

History

Cassell

The story of the international refugees created by the political tyranny of post-colonial Somalia. The author, an established Somali novelist who went into exile as a form of protest, has interviewed Somalis in Africa and Europe to provide this portrait of how people react, are wounded, how they survive, change and even thrive when they flee their homes and are turned into refugees. It shows how the refugees see themselves and how the host countries treat refugees. It reveals how refugees have adapted, or failed to adapt, to different countries and how their lives became disrupted and recreated as a result of politics and economics. Although it focuses on a particular people, the work should help readers to understand the experiences of people forced by mass migrations to live fragmented lives in the post-modern era of rapid change.

This first novel in Nuruddin Farah's Blood in the Sun trilogy tells the story of Askar, a man coming of age in the turmoil of modern Africa. With his father a victim of the bloody Ethiopian civil war and his mother dying the day of his birth, Askar is taken in and raised by a woman named Misra amid the scandal, gossip, and ritual of a small African village. As an adolescent, Askar goes to live in Somalia's capital, where he strives to find himself just as Somalia struggles for national identity. 

World Literature

Pan Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Farah, Nuruddin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Farah, Nuruddin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Farah, Nuruddin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Secrets

Gifts

Maps

Links: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

From a Crooked Rib

Knots: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

Crossbones: A Novel (Past Imperfect Trilogy)

Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (Literature, Culture, and Identity)

Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (Literature, Culture, and Identity)

Maps