Nadifa Mohamed
Nadifa Mohamed ( born in Hargeisa, Somalia, in 1981 to a merchant marine father and a mother from a politically active family, and was trapped in exile when civil war erupted. Mohamed's first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2009), described in The Guardian a
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Nadifa Mohamed ( born in Hargeisa, Somalia, in 1981 to a merchant marine father and a mother from a politically active family, and was trapped in exile when civil war erupted. Mohamed's first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2009), described in The Guardian as "a significant, affecting book of the dispossessed", is a semi-biographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and '40s, during the colonial period. She has said that "the novel grew out of a desire to learn more about my roots, to elucidate Somali history for a wider audience and to tell a story that I found fascinating." A "fictionalized biography", it won critical and popular acclaim in countries as far away as Korea. The book won the 2010 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2010 Guardian First Book Award, the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize and the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Her third Novel The Fortune Men, published in May 27, 2021 was Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize.
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