On Nuruddin Farah

The International Neustadt Prize was conferred in 1998 to Somali author Nuruddin Farah by a jury of writers from all over the world. Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, and Czeslaw Milosz have been among the recipients, altogether fifteen of them, eleven of whom were later awarded the Nobel. After the prize given to Assia Djebar, it is another recognition of the importance of African literature on the world scene. One can think of many reasons that justify such a distinction.

In themselves, some features of the life and personality of this novelist are unusual, yet represent a sort of summary of the troubles and strifes of many artists from the African continent. An unusual life, since Farah had to live in exile, under threat from the dictator Siyad Barre, for over twenty years. All that time, he kept alive the “country in his mind,” In his books, only to discover a shattered nation when he finally came back to Mogadiscio in 1996. His life is unusual in the number of languages, alphabets, and world views that shaped him as a youth: Somali, Arabic, Amharic, English, Italian, Punjabi, to which he later added other African and European languages. Ironically, his first novel, serialized in the daily paper in the newly transcribed Somali, was promptly silenced by the regime. He then chose to write in English, the language left by the temporary connection of Northern Somalia with Britain. He thus finds himself with a small readership at home, no support from a nation or from Commonwealth institutions: an isolated position that he turned into a source of strength. More unusual even is his attitude: in all his travels for over two decades, he has chosen not to settle in either Britain or the US, although he has often taught or been resident writer there for short periods. The nomad has no roots, but an African space that is home, and his space has been Nigeria, the Sudan, Gambia, and now South Africa.

Journalists are often fascinated by this unusual life: yet the writers of the Neustadt have certainly chosen to award this distinction for the simple reason that his books are good. For a long time he was considered a writer’s writer, admired by his peers, praised by Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Robert Coover, and many others, but not part of the canon and not very familiar in Africa or anglophone countries. True, the novels were not easy to find and they were thought to be rather difficult for secondary schools, but demanding works have a lasting power that is now finally being recognized outside the world of specialists. One can think of three main reasons the text could be considered baffling, not easy to classify—three reasons that are at the core of their lasting power on readers.

Farah’s novels have a way of never reflecting dominant accepted thinking. From his first novel, his stance has not been the expected one. From a Crooked Rib is the story of a young country woman who comes to town to escape from marriage to an old man. The simple tale has been read as a national allegory or as a feminist tract. Probably true, but one has to face the fact that the plot is a disturbing reversal of the usual moralistic Jane-comes-to-town story: Ebla finds herself as a person and lives happily off two different men. Where is the lesson? This early text, at once earnest and ironical, already acts like a riddle.

The two trilogies are the impressive achievement of the years of exile. In the first, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, one would think that attacking dictatorships is a fairly consensual theme. Yet there is moral comfort in the position of victim, as the novels aim to demonstrate, from the Somali example, that arbitrary power begins inside the home. Along Reichian lines, Farah not only shows how violence and cowardice are bred in a patriarchal society (Sweet and Sour Milk), but even how matriarchs condone and extend the system, when, for example, a grandmother insists on her grand-daughter’s excision...