An interview with Nadifa Mohamed: “I don’t feel bound by Somalia…but the stories that have really motivated me are from there”
Nadifa Mohamed: “I wanted [in this book] to sink deeply into a small thing.”
Nadifa Mohamed is a writer with a growing reputation as a powerful and poetic literary voice within the global Somali diaspora. Born in Hargeisa – the present-day capital of Somaliland – in the early 1980s, she left during the civil war when “the city wasn’t really functional – it was blacked-out and curfewed (but I don’t remember that).” This year she was nominated as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, her first novel, “˜Black Mamba Boy’ was shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award.
Whilst most contemporary writing about Somalia focuses on the war, Mohamed’s recently published “˜The Orchard of Lost Souls’ is much more than just an account of violence and suffering.
