Nuruddin Farah

Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Nuruddin Farah is one of Africa's most respected contemporary writers. Maps is the first novel in his acclaimed Blood in the Sun trilogy, set in his native land. Askar lost his father in the bloody war between Ethiopia and Somalia, and his mother died giving birth to him. Taken in by Misra, a kindhearted woman, he grows up in a small village. But as an adolescent, a true child of his...

"When Bella learns of the murder of her beloved half brother by political extremists in Mogadiscio, she's in Rome. The two had different fathers but shared a Somali mother, from whom Bella's inherited her freewheeling ways. An internationally known fashion photographer, dazzling but aloof, she comes and goes as she pleases, juggling three lovers. But with her teenage niece and nephew effectively orphaned--their mother abandoned them years ago--she...

Set against the backdrop of the civil war in Somalia, this stunningly ambitious novel was aLos Angeles Times Book Review Best Fiction of the Year Selection. In Mogadiscio, the dictator is preparing to flee and clans are moving into the city, which rattles with machine gun fire. Society is collapsing under the weight of its own perversities. Unexpectedly, Kalaman, a businessman who owns a computer store, receives a visit from his childhood crush, who...

"A gripping new novel from today's "most important African novelist". (The New York Times Review of Books) A dozen years after his last visit, Jeebleh returns to his beloved Mogadiscio to see old friends. He is accompanied by his son-in-law, Malik, a journalist intent on covering the region's ongoing turmoil. What greets them at first is not the chaos Jeebleh remembers, however, but an eerie calm enforced by ubiquitous white-robed figures bearing...

In a waking nightmare of a police state in Africa, an old man finds himself poised in mortal combat with an elusive and cunning enemy in an atmosphere where the distinction between public and private justice is obscured.