Salvaging Mogadishu from Ruin and Rubble

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 hasearned 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.