Nuruddin Farah. Photo credit: Boundary2.org.
Celebrated Somali writer Nuruddin Farah’s new novel will be out on 4 December 2018. The 384-page North of Dawn, forthcoming from Penguin Random House, is the 72-year-old’s 14th novel.
One of the best-acclaimed writers on the global stage, and one considered a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Nuruddin Farah’s other novels include: From a Crooked Rib (1970), A Naked Needle (1976), Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981), Close Sesame (1983); the Blood in the Sun trilogy: Maps (1986), Gifts (1993), and Secrets (1998); Territoires (2000); the Past Imperfect trilogy: Links (2003), Knots (2007), and Crossbones (2011); and Hiding in Plain Sight (2014). He is the author of the play A Dagger in a Vacuum (1965) and the nonfiction book Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (2000). Farah is a recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Premio Cavour in Italy, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Sweden, the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, the St Malo Literature Festival’s prize, a UNESCO fellowship, the English-Speaking Union Literary Award, and a Corman Artists fellowship.
Here is a description of North of Dawn from Penguin Random House:
A bold, absorbing novel about a couple whose tranquil life abroad is irrevocably transformed by the arrival of their son’s widow and children, from Somalia’s most celebrated novelist.
For decades, Gacalo and Mugdi have lived in Oslo, where they’ve led a peaceful, largely assimilated life and raised two children. Their beloved son, Dhaqaneh, however, driven by feelings of alienation to jihadism in Somalia, kills himself in a suicide attack, and the couple reluctantly decide to offer their daughter-in-law, Waliya, and teenage grandchildren escape from the refugee camp where they’ve been trapped since Dhaqaneh’s death. But on arrival in Oslo, Waliya cloaks herself even more deeply in religion, while her children hunger for the freedoms of their new homeland, a rift that will have life-altering consequences for the entire family.
Set against the backdrop of real events, North of Dawn is a provocative, devastating story of love, loyalty, and national identity that asks whether it is ever possible to escape a legacy of violence–and if so, at what cost.
North of Dawn has been praised by Kirkus Reviews: “Farah’s insistence on isolating the humanity in even the most difficult characters is a beacon of hope against fear and loathing.” And by Vanity Fair: “Farah’s entire body of work has been a testament to his country’s divisions and ultimate collapse in the wake of civil war in 1991 … In typical Farah fashion, everyone’s fate is bound together and no one is left unscathed by the ravages of extremism.”
Preorder North of Dawn on Amazon.
