BORN: 1945, Baidoa, Somalia NATIONALITY: Somali GENRE: Fiction, drama MAJOR WORKS: From a Crooked Rib (1970) Sweet and Sour Milk (1979) Sardines (1981) Maps (1986)
An important figure in contemporary African literature whose fiction is informed by his country’s turbulent history, Farah combines native legends, myths, and Islamic doctrines with a journalistic objectivity to comment on his country’s present autocratic government. His criticism of traditional Somali society—in particular, the plight of women and the patriarchal family structure—has made him an ‘‘enemy of the state,’’ and he has lived in voluntary exile in England and Nigeria. Kirsten Holst Petersen described Farah’s ‘‘thankless task’’ of writing about the oppressed: ‘‘Pushed by his own sympathy and sensitivity, but not pushed too far, anchored to a modified Western bourgeois ideology, he battles valiantly, not for causes, but for individual freedom, for a slightly larger space round each person, to be filled as he or she chooses.’’
Works in Biographical and Historical Context
Early Life in a Tradition of Rich Oral Culture Born in 1945 in Baidoa to Hassan Farah (a merchant) and Aleeli Faduma Farah (a poet), Nuruddin Farah was educated at first in the Ogaden, a Somali-populated area now in Ethiopia. His first languages as a child were Somali, Amharic, and Arabic, followed by Italian and English. From these early years one can see two important features that were to dominate his writing life. First, he was brought up in a tradition with a rich oral culture, in which poetry is a craft that takes years to master. Poetry enters political debates in a sophisticated manner, epic or satirical but also oblique and allusive, and plays an important social function. Some of Farah’s relatives, including his mother, are known masters of the genre. Second, the history of colonization and borders gave him early access to a wide range of cultures: his travels and readings made him a cosmopolitan writer, a world nomad who was to write from a distance about Somalia, ‘‘my country in my mind,’’ as he once called it.
In 1965 his novella Why Die So Soon? brought him to public attention in his country and into contact with the Canadian writer Margaret Laurence, then in Somalia. While a student at the University of Chandigarh in India (1966–1970) he wrote—in two months—From a Crooked Rib (1970), a novel that has maintained its popularity for the past thirty-eight years.
Uncertain Future and Coup in Somalia In 1969 a coup gave power to the military regime of Siad Barre, replacing the democratic government that came to power in 1960 when Somalia gained its independence from Italy. In 1970 Farah went back to Somalia with his Indian wife, Chitra Muliyil Farah, and their son, Koschin (born in 1969). Farah then taught at a secondary school and finished his second novel, A Naked Needle. The publisher accepted it but agreed to hold it, until 1976, due to political uncertainty in Somalia. It describes the debates among the elite in the capital, the ‘‘privile-gentzia’’—the privileged—and the tentative hopes in the new ‘‘revolution.’’ Later Farah rejected this early book as irrelevant and refused to have it reprinted: ‘‘It was not the answer to the tremendous challenge the tyrannical regime posed,’’ he says in ‘‘Why I Write’’ (1988).
Censorship and Exile In 1972 the Somali language was given an official transcription and dictionary; what was spoken by the whole nation could become a national literary language. It was for Farah the long-awaited opportunity to write fiction in his mother tongue and thereby speak directly to his people. In 1973 he started the serialization of a novel titled ‘‘Tolow Waa Talee Ma...!’’ in Somali News, but the series was interrupted by censorship. Farah, then on a trip to the Soviet Union, was advised not to run any more risks. Thus he began a long exile from his country.
Extending Political Themes in Fiction His visit to the Soviet Union extended to a trip through Hungary, Egypt, and Greece in the days of the Siad Barre military regime. From this contact with various types of political power came his first major novel, Sweet and Sour Milk (1979). It had to be written in English, since Farah could no longer be published at home. But this imposed language, implicitly creating an international readership, extended the scope of his fictional exploration of political themes. With this novel Farah started a trilogy he calls ‘‘Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship,’’ which has much relevance inside and outside Africa.
His next novel, Maps (1986), began another trilogy known as the ‘‘Blood in the Sun’’ trilogy. These works were set amid the real-life Ogaden War, a territorial dispute fought between Somalia and Ethiopia in the 1970s. In 1996, Farah once again returned to his home country, which was then under the weak control of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). This mirrors the events in his 2007 novel Knots, in which a Somali woman who has lived most of her life in Canada returns to her native country to discover the devastation caused by the local warlords. Farah also wrote Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (2000), a nonfiction book that chronicles the lives of Somalis forced to flee from the country after the collapse of the government in 1991. In 1998 Farah was awarded the prestigious Neu-stadt International Prize for Literature and is regarded by many as one of Africa’s most significant literary figures of the twentieth century.
Works in Literary Context
Nuruddin Farah’s novels are an important contribution to African literature. He writes about his country, Somalia, but the interest is more than regional: The books present the theme of individual freedom in the face of arbitrary power in a way that is relevant outside Africa as well, and they do so with an intellectual and poetic control that makes him one of the most stimulating prose writers in Africa today. Influenced by the work of authors in his extended family, the guiding topic for the majority of Farah’s work is the plight of women in Somalia. Nuruddin’s novels were not well-received by the military regime in Somalia, however, he did receive mild praise from critics abroad.
Linking Freedom with Feminism In the slim novel From a Crooked Rib, a young Somali woman, Ebla, leaves her nomad community to avoid an arranged marriage, and in her quest for independence she finally finds a kind of stability in the capital, Mogadishu, living with two men of her choice. The journey to freedom can be read as an allegory of the birth of Somalia as a new nation. But the attraction of the book lies in the sensitive portrayal of a young peasant woman, illiterate but not naive, aware of her low status in society but always clear-eyed and resourceful. It came as a surprise to readers to realize how well the young writer, male and Muslim, could represent a woman’s perception of herself, her body, and the world.
Sardines (1981) is another of Farah’s strikingly feminist novels. The story focuses on the world of women hemmed in together in their houses, women who are like children hiding in closets when they play the game ‘‘sardines.’’ Medina, a journalist, has decided that her daughter, Ubax, aged eight, is not going to go through the ritual clitoral excision and infibulation performed on all Somali women according to custom. Medina is pitted against her ineffectual husband and the power of her mother and mother-in-law. Although ideological debates play an important part in the story, the main weight of the meaning is again carried by a dense metaphorical network: natural images—fire, water, and birds—show how the balance in the fertility cycles is broken by the socially enforced clitoral circumcision, seen by Farah as a deliberate maiming of women. Again the issue is not merely feminism; it is connected with overall political oppression: ‘‘Like all good Somali poets,’’ Farah told Julie Kitchener, ‘‘I used women as a symbol for Somalia. Because when the women are free, then and only then can we talk about a free Somalia.’’ In Sardines Farah touches a taboo subject as a warning to his compatriots, but also to all nations where, according to him, the subjection of women paves the way for the establishment of tyranny.
Advocating Human Rights Farah is generally acknowledged, along with Sembene Ousmane and Ayi Kwei Armah, whose female characters also possess the same vision as Farah’s women, as one of the African writers who has done the greatest justice in championing human rights through his work. His influence extends beyond the world of literature to include political and cultural realms, particularly with regard to gender inequality.
Works in Critical Context
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Nuruddin Farah
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