Nuruddin Farah

Farah has garnered acclaim as one of the greatest contemporary writers in the world, In addition, Farah is a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Personal life Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, in Italian Somaliland. His father Hassan Farah was a merchant and interpreter and his mother Aleeli (née Faduma) an oral poet. Farah was the fourth eldest boy in a large family.

As a child, Farah frequented schools in Somalia and adjacent Ethiopia, attending classes in Kallafo in Ogaden (now the Somali Region). He studied English, Arabic and Amharic. In 1963, he was forced to flee the region following the Ogaden Rebellion and subsequent border conflicts between Somalia and Ethiopia. He settled in independent Somalia, where he found work as a typist in the Ministry of Education.

Farah's sister Basra Farah Hassan, a diplomat, was killed in a bombing in January 2014 while working with the United Nations in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Farah currently resides between Minneapolis, Minnesota, Cape Town, South Africa, and New York City, where he has been Distinguished Professor of Literature at Bard College since 2010.

Literary career

After releasing an early short story in his native Somali language, Farah shifted to writing in English while still attending university in India. His books have been translated into 17 languages. and North of Dawn (2018). Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bhakti Shringarpure observed: "The most prolific writer Somalia has ever produced, Farah has indeed kept his country alive in our collective imaginations for the past 40 years. ... North of Dawn beautifully articulates the pervasive anxiety and nervous condition of being a migrant."

Farah is also a playwright, whose plays include work for the stage — A Dagger in Vacuum (produced Mogadiscio, 1970), The Offering (produced Colchester, Essex, 1975), Yussuf and His Brothers (produced Jos, Nigeria, 1982) — and for radio: Tartar Delight, 1980 (Germany), and A Spread of Butter. Farah also serves on the International Advisory Board of Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, published by Macalester College.

Selected awards and honours

1974–76: UNESCO fellowship 1980: English-Speaking Union Literary Award (for Sweet and Sour Milk) 1990: Corman Artists fellowship 1991: Kurt Tucholsky Prize, Stockholm, Sweden 1993: Best Novel Award, Zimbabwe (for Gifts) 1998: Neustadt International Prize for Literature

Works Novels

Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy

Blood in the Sun trilogy

Past Imperfect trilogy

Short fiction Novella

Plays

̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶— (1976) "The Offering". Lotus (Afro-Asian Writings), vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 77–93.

Non-fiction

Essays Autobiographical and literary essays "Celebrating Differences: The 1998 Neustadt Lecture", Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah, edited by Derek Wright, Africa World Press, 2002, pp. 15–24. "Childhood of My Schizophrenia", The Times Literary Supplement, 23–29 November 1990, p. 1264. "A Country in Exile", World Literature Today, vol. 72, no. 4, 1998, pp. 713–5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/40154257. "The Creative Writer and the Politician". The Classic, vol. 3, no. 1, 1984, pp. 27–30. "Do Fences Have Sides?", The Commonwealth in Canada: Proceedings of the Second Triennial Conference of CACLALS, Part 2, edited by Uma Parameswaran, Writers' Workshop, 1983, pp. 174–82. "Do You Speak German?!", Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, vol. 22, 1982, pp. 33–8. "Germany—And All That Jazz", Okike: An African Journal of New Writing, vol. 18, 1981, pp. 8–12. "Ibsen, In Other Words", Nordlit, vol. 34, 2015, pp. 15–22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7557/13.3350. "In Praise of Exile", Literature in Exile, edited by John Glad, Duke University Press, 1990, pp. 64–77. "Savaging the Soul of a Nation", The Writer in Politics, edited by William Glass and Lorin Cuoco. Southern Illinois University Press, 1996, pp. 110–5. "Why I Write". Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah, edited by Derek Wright. Africa World Press, 2002

Social and political essays "Bastards of Empire", Transition, vol. 65, 1995, pp. 26–35. "Centuries-long War for Somali Peninsula", WardheerNews, 12 April 2018. "Country Cousins", London Review of Books, 3 September 1998, pp. 19–20. "False Accounting", Granta, vol. 49, 1994, pp. 171–81. "My Life as a Diplomat", The New York Times. 26 May 2007. "Of Tamarind and Cosmopolitanism", African Cities Reader, edited by Ntone Edjabe and Edgar Pieterse. Chimurenga, 2010, pp. 178–81. "People of a Half-Way House", London Review of Books, 21 March 1996, pp. 19–20. "Praise the Marines? I Suppose So", The New York Times, 28 December 1992, pp. 14–17. "The Family House". Transition, vol. 99, 2008, pp. 6–15. "The Women of Kismayo", The Times Literary Supplement. 15 November 1996, p. 18. "Which way to the Sea, Please?" Horn of Africa, vol. 1, no. 4, 1978, pp. 31–6. Republished by WardheerNews, 4 March 2015.