Nuruddin Farah is a well-known Somali writer whose works explore subjects such as identity, politics, and society. Farah was born on November 24, 1945, in Baidoa, Italian Somaliland (now Somalia), and his literary career has spanned several decades.
Farah, the son of a trader and well-known Somali poet Aleeli Faduma, had his education in Ethiopia and at the colonial-era Institutio Magistrale in Mogadishu. His major languages were Somali, Amharic, and Arabic, but he also mastered English and some Italian. His decision to write in English, largely due to the typewriter he had at the time, eventually led to an international readership.
Here was Farah’s reply when asked how he got into writing in the first place:
One of the first things I remember was reading Crime and Punishment in Arabic . . . I was about 10. I had an older brother who did not like that I was very very restless. Either I had a ball which I was kicking around and breaking glasses or I was moving around. So to make me calm down, one of the things he did was he would give me big books like Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment . . . The idea my brother had in his head was to give me the biggest book he could find so that I would sit down and the condition was that if I finished that book, came and told him the story of the book, he would give me a gift. That’s the way I earned my pocket money. That’s the way I earned gifts from him.
After working for the Ministry of Education, Farah pursued literature and philosophy at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. This decision to study in India over America was a tough one, and according to him:
Many people who knew me at that time did not think that it was wise of me to go to India and nearly everyone including my older brothers thought that I would benefit from going to America to study journalism and literature because I had a scholarship to go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I did not like going to America and I’ll explain to you a very silly couple of silly incidents that happened in Somalia at that time
Some Somalis had gone to America and Italy and Germany because there was no University at the time in the country and they came back and like in the days of COVID, they used to carry small little bottles full of alcohol and therefore every time they shook hands with people in Mogadishu, they would clean their hands and say “germs germs” because they came from Europe or America. The idea of carrying a small bottle full of alcohol and cleaning my hands with alcohol every time I greeted the Somali okay made me feel very silly and I thought if I go to India, nearly everything is germ-full. If I survive the germs in India, I would have a great immunity system which I still do.
While in India, Farah wrote his first full-length novel, Crooked Rib (1970), when he was only 25 years old. It has been described as “one of the cornerstones of modern East African literature today.”. The novel depicted one woman’s resolve to maintain her dignity in a society that thinks “God created Woman from a crooked rib; and anyone who trieth to straighten it, breaketh it.” It was Farah’s first feminist work.
In his third novel, A Naked Needle (1976), Farah used a minor story of interracial and cross-cultural love to paint a bleak portrait of postrevolutionary Somali life in the mid-1970s. He then produced a trilogy—Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), and Close Sesame (1983)—about living under a peculiarly African dictatorship, in which ideological platitudes barely conceal an almost surreal world, and human bonds have been severed by fear and horror.
Farah’s unflinching account of life under dictator Mohamed Siad Barre eventually led him into exile. He taught in Europe, North America, and other parts of Africa, writing in 1998: “My novels are about states of exile; about women shivering in the cruel cold in a world ruled by men; about the commoner denied justice; about a torturer tortured by guilt, his own conscience; about a traitor betrayed.” Secrets, the third novel in his second trilogy, which includes the novels Maps (1986) and Gifts (1992), was published in 1998. Links (2003), Knots (2006), and Crossbones (2011) form another trilogy. Farah’s previous novels include North of Dawn (2018).
Farah’s achievements in the literary field include being awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998 and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize multiple times. He is celebrated for his insightful portrayal of Somali society and his skillful exploration of universal themes such as love, loss, and resilience. Additionally, Farah’s work has contributed to a greater understanding of African literature on the global stage. He currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Cape Town, South Africa.
Quotes from Nuruddin Farah:
“I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it.”
“No writing is good enough until you, as an author, make a small contribution, the size of a drop, into the ocean of the world’s literature.”
“Many more villagers, who have seen an elephant for the first time in their lives, give absurd exaggerations regarding his size, weight, and height. One of them describes him as ‘a fundament!’. Another, elaborating, alludes to the term ‘firmament,’ because of the elephant’s hugeness. He felt as though the sky was obliterated from his vision. The last to be interviewed by the local TV station swears that he sensed the world lean forward as the elephant came closer and tilt backwards as the beast walked away.
This large mammal ambles purposefully. He pays no heed to the crowded silence following him in stealthy consciousness. One of the villagers, a woman often suspected of dabbling in witchcraft, talks of her inspired theory: that this was no elephant, more like a human on a holy mission of avenging justice. Two other witnesses, neither having had any contact with the woman, speak in substantiation of the woman’s claims, giving as evidence the observation that the elephant turned around when someone said something in Somali. Several villagers will not comment, afraid of a fitting retribution should they do so.”“There are moments in one’s life when everything one considers to be a win is for all practical purposes a loss.”
