Farah, Nuruddin 1945–

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Farah, Nuruddin 1945–

PERSONAL: Born November 24, 1945, in Baidoa, Somalia; son of Hassan (a merchant) and Aleeli (a poet; maiden name, Faduma) Farah; married Chitra Muliyil Farah (divorced); married Amina Mama (a physician), July 21, 1992; children: (first marriage) Koschin Nuruddin (son); (second marriage) Kaahiye (son). Education: Attended Punjab University, Chandigarh, India, 1966–70, University of London, 1974–75, and University of Essex, 1975–76. Religion: "Born Muslim."

ADDRESSES: Home—Kaduna, Nigeria. Agent—c/o Riverhead Publicity, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: Writer, translator, broadcaster, and educator. Clerk-typist for Ministry of Education in Somalia, 1964–66; teacher at secondary school in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1969–71; lecturer in comparative literature at Afgoi College of Education, and at Somali National University, Mogadishu, 1971–74; Royal Court Theatre, London, England, resident writer, 1976; University of Ibadan, Jos Campus, Jos, Nigeria, associate professor, 1981–83; Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, professor, 1990–. Guest professor and lecturer at universities in the United States, Europe, and Africa.

MEMBER: Union of Writers of the African Peoples.

AWARDS, HONORS: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) fellowship, 1974–76; literary award from English-Speaking Union, 1980, for Sweet and Sour Milk; Neustadt Award, 1998.

WRITINGS:

A Dagger in Vacuum (play), produced in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1970.

From a Crooked Rib (novel), Heinemann (London, England), 1970.

The Offering (play), produced in Colchester, Essex, England, 1975.

A Naked Needle (novel), Heinemann (London, England), 1976.

A Spread of Butter (radio play), 1978.

Sweet and Sour Milk (first novel in the "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" trilogy), Allison & Busby (London, England), 1979, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1992.

Tartar Delight (radio play), broadcast in Germany, 1980.

Sardines (second novel in the "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" trilogy), Allison & Busby (London, England), 1981, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1992.

Close Sesame (third novel in the "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" trilogy), Allison & Busby (London, England), 1982, Graywolf Press (St. Paul, MN), 1992.

Yussuf and His Brothers (play), produced in Jos, Nigeria, 1982.

Maps (novel), Pan Book (London, England), 1986, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1987.

Gavor (novel), 1990.

Secrets (novel), Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1998.

Gifts, Arcade (New York, NY), 1999.

Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (nonfiction), Cassell (London, England), 2000.

Links, Riverhead (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of short stories, including "Why Dead So Soon?," 1965. Contributor to periodicals, including Suitcase: A Journal of Transcultural Traffic.

SIDELIGHTS: An African writer best known for novels that champion the oppressed, particularly women, Nuruddin Farah sets his plots in twentieth-century Somalia, with most of the action occurring in the capital, Mogadishu. Farah is best known for the "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" trilogy about an African dictatorship led by the fictional Major General Muhammad Siyad, referred to as the "General," and the subsequent demise of democracy in Somalia. The first volume, Sweet and Sour Milk, focuses on a political activist who attempts to unravel the mysterious circumstances involving the death of his twin brother. The second novel, Sardines, depicts life under the General's repressive regime, while also examining the social barriers that limit Somalian women and their quest for individuality and equality. The novel's central character is Medina, a young woman who, after losing her job as editor of a state-run newspaper, refuses to support the General's domestic policies. The final volume in the trilogy is Close Sesame, the story of an elderly man who spent many years in prison for opposing both colonial and post-revolutionary governments. When the man's son plots to overthrow the General's regime, the man attempts to stop the coup himself.

Farah often portrays women's ability to take an active part in the environment which surrounds them. Because Farah presents his women from this perspective, he is unique among African creative writers. Farah's depiction of progress made by African women in their bid for personal freedom from outdated values is typified by Medina in Sweet and Sour Milk. Conscious that sacrifice is indispensable in any concerted struggle against established authority, Medina, despite a privileged background, rises up against the General in a blow for the silent majority. As an active member of a revolutionary group, Medina offers counsel and protection to young students who participate in protests of the General's tyrannical form of government. Another character in the same book, Qumman, also serves as an example of Farah's portrayal of women taking an active role in the world. A suppressed, second-class citizen of traditional Muslim culture, Qumman is the typical mother, loving, all-caring, and patient. The victim of physical abuse by her husband, Qumman lives only for her children. But despite being cast in the traditional mold, Qumman organizes the religious rituals involved with her son Soyaan's funeral while arranging for the presence of the sheikhs watching over the corpse. Though such arrangements would be common in Western culture, this clearly exemplifies the changing role of women in African society.

In his 2004 novel, Links, the author tells the tale of Jeeblah, who is living in New York but returns after twenty years to Somalia, both to visit his recently deceased mother's grave and to help recover a friend's child who has been abducted. Back in Somalia, Jeeblah is nearly overwhelmed by the changes in his homeland, including the presence of warlords who prey on the citizenry. Nevertheless, Jeeblah is determined to bring about the return of his friend's daughter. "Farah writes of governmental and social unrest in chilling detail that hardly seems to be fiction at all," noted Christopher Korenowsky in the Library Journal. Writing in Newsweek, Malcolm Jones called the novel a "roughhewn art, but art it surely is." The reviewer added, "Like Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene, writers to whom he can be favorably compared, Farah poses questions that, once asked, never go away."

Though sometimes criticized for substandard stylistic and technical writing, 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 the African writers who have done the greatest justice in championing human rights. The political tone of his novels is evident as Farah attempts to show the pressure of the Somalian regime on individual psyches, but his writings concentrate on characters who, despite the system, slowly grow as individuals. Critics have praised the uniqueness of Farah's writing. "The novels are, in the widest sense, political but are never simplistic or predictable," declared Angela Smith in Contemporary Novelists. "Farah is not politically naive or specifically anti-Soviet; his implicit theme is the imprisoning effect of outside intervention in Somalian life."

Farah is also the author of the nonfiction work Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora. This book, which is based on interviews with Somali refugees conducted between 1991 and 1998, focuses on the refugees' lives, their sufferings at the hands of various overseers, and their attempts to build new lives. "Farah's courageous and unflinchingly honest book, sparing neither himself nor his subjects, helps us to understand the experiences of all peoples forced from their homelands into places where they have to start all over again," wrote Derek Wright in World Literature Today. "It is recommended reading for anyone working with refugees."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Alden, Patricia, and Louis Tremaine, Nuruddin Farah, Twayne (New York, NY), 1999.

Contemporary Novelists, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Little, Kenneth, Women and Urbanization in African Literature, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1981.

Wright, Derek, The Novels of Nuruddin Farah, Bayreuth University (Germany), 1994.

PERIODICALS

African Affairs, July, 1995, Stewart Brown, "The Novels of Nuruddin Farah," p. 413.

Africa News Service, November 1, 2004, Fanuel Jongwe, "Author Farah on Afro-Politics"; November 4, 2004, Sheuneni Kurasha, "Writers Have Role in Solving Problems"; November 16, 2004, "Farah Launches Novel in Zim"; November 23, 2004, Ron Charles, review of Links.

American Visions, February, 2000, Jennifer Hunt, "The 'Blood in the Sun' Trilogy: Maps, Gifts and Secrets," p. 36.

Booklist, May 15, 1998, Bonnie Johnston, review of Secrets, p. 1594; August, 1999, Bonnie Johnston, review of Gifts, p. 2023; March 15, 2004, Frank Caso, review of Links, p. 1264.

Economist, February 13, 1999, review of The Secret. Entertainment Weekly, March 26, 2004, Ben Spier, review of Links, p. 77.

Journal of Asian and African Studies, October, 2004, Lee Cassanelli, review of Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora, p. 484.

Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2004, review of Links, p. 146.

Library Journal, May 1, 1998, Lisa Rohrbaugh, review of Secrets, p. 136; August, 1999, Ellen Flexman, reviews of Maps, and Gifts, p. 138; April 1, 2004, Christopher Korenowsky, review of Links, p. 120.

Newsweek, April 19, 2004, Malcolm Jones, review of Links, p. 65.

Newsweek International, April 19, 2004, Malcolm Jones, review of Links, p. 103.

Publishers Weekly, March 30, 1998, review of Secrets, p. 68; June 28, 1999, reviews of Maps and Gifts, pp. 52-53; August 23, 1999, Stephen Gray, "Nu-ruddin Farah: The Novelist and the Nomad," interview with Farah, p. 28; March 1, 2004, review of Links, p. 48.

Research in African Literature, spring, 2000, John C. Hawley, review of Nuruddin Farah, p. 198, Jacqueline Bardolph, "On Nuruddin Farah," p. 119; spring, 2005, Julia Praud, "Beyond Empire and Nation: Postnational Arguments in the Fiction of Nuruddin Farah and B. Kojo Laing," p. 130.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1994, Reed Way Dasenbrock, "The Novels of Nuruddin Farah," p. 868; autumn, 1998, Ngigi wa Thiong'o, "Nuruddin Farah: A Statement of Nomination to the 1998 Neustadt Jury," p. 715, "Chronology (Nuruddin Farah)," p. 716, "Selected Bibliography (Nuruddin Farah), "p. 723, Jacqueline Bardolph, "Brothers and Sisters in Nuruddin Farah's Two Trilogies," p. 727, Charles Sugnet, "Nuruddin Farah's Maps: Deterritorialization and 'The Postmodern,'" p. 739, and Reed Way Dasenbrock, "Nuruddin Farah: A Tale of Two Trilogies," p. 747; summer, 2000, Derek Wright, review of Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora, p. 574, and Charlie Sugnet, review of Nuruddin Farah, p. 574.