4 - Salvaging Mogadishu from Ruin and Rubble
Corresponding Author(s) : Nuruddin Farah
Africa Review of Books,
Vol. 11 No. 1 (2015): Africa Review of Books, Volume 11, n° 1, 2015
Abstract
For decades, exiled author Nuruddin Farah has dreamt, written and carried Somalia, ‘the country of his imagination,’ throughout his nomadic existence. His eleven novels, one non-fictional study of the Somali diaspora, articles, essays, broadcasts and interviews bear testimony to this fact and are literary manifestations of the tragic turn of events in postcolonial Somalia. He was forced to flee Somalia, after having incurred the wrath of Mohamed Siyad Barre, for his satirical and critical remarks against the Barre regime in his second novel, A Naked Needle (1978). Today, Farah has
earned a distinguished and rightful place for himself among Anglophone-African writers and internationally. A Naked Needle is one of his least Somali novels and a very silly work, (when compared to his later works that engage explicitly with Somali politics, culture and society), as Farah puts it across in a conversation with Kenyan author and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina.
Keywords
- Farah, Nuruddin. Crossbones, New York, USA: Riverhead Books, Penguin, 2011.
- _____________, 13 December 2010, ‘Young Thing,’ The New Yorker.
- Farah, Nuruddin, in conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina.http://kwani.org/event/kwani-out-about/116/nuruddin_farah_in_conversation.htm, accessed 18 April 2013.
- Farah, Nuruddin, ‘Of the Tamarind and Cosmopolitanism,’ June 2004, http://www.africancitiesreader.org.za/reader/chapters/02_NF.pdf
- Pericou, Matteo, and Nuruddin Farah, ‘The City in My Mind,’ 2 July 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03Farah.html?_r=0
- Kapteijns, Lidwein. ‘Making Memories of Mogadishu in Somali Poetry about the civil war,’ in Mediations of Violence in Africa: Fashioning new Futures from Contested Pasts, ed. Richters,Annemeik and Lidwein Kapteijns. Brill: Leiden, 2010, 25-74.
- Seigneurie, Ken, 2011, ‘Introduction,’ Standing by the Ruins: Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon, Fordham University Press, 1-27.
References
Farah, Nuruddin. Crossbones, New York, USA: Riverhead Books, Penguin, 2011.
_____________, 13 December 2010, ‘Young Thing,’ The New Yorker.
Farah, Nuruddin, in conversation with Binyavanga Wainaina.http://kwani.org/event/kwani-out-about/116/nuruddin_farah_in_conversation.htm, accessed 18 April 2013.
Farah, Nuruddin, ‘Of the Tamarind and Cosmopolitanism,’ June 2004, http://www.africancitiesreader.org.za/reader/chapters/02_NF.pdf
Pericou, Matteo, and Nuruddin Farah, ‘The City in My Mind,’ 2 July 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/opinion/sunday/03Farah.html?_r=0
Kapteijns, Lidwein. ‘Making Memories of Mogadishu in Somali Poetry about the civil war,’ in Mediations of Violence in Africa: Fashioning new Futures from Contested Pasts, ed. Richters,Annemeik and Lidwein Kapteijns. Brill: Leiden, 2010, 25-74.
Seigneurie, Ken, 2011, ‘Introduction,’ Standing by the Ruins: Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon, Fordham University Press, 1-27.