Nuruddin Farah

Nuruddin Farah (born 1945) is a Somali novelist, playwright, and essayist widely recognized as the most important Somali literary voice in any language, and a long-standing Nobel Prize contender. Born in Baidoa in what was then Italian Somaliland, he studied in India and was living abroad when his 1970 novel *From a Crooked Rib* — narrating a woman's escape from forced marriage — was condemned by the Barre regime. He has lived in exile from Somalia ever since. His major works include the trilogy *Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship* (1979–83) and the Blood in the Sun trilogy — *Maps* (1986), *Gifts* (1992), *Secrets* (1998) — which examine Somali identity, exile, and the collapse of the state. He has taught at universities in Europe, Africa, and North America. His fiction is the most sustained literary exploration of Somali experience in existence. Nuruddin Farah lived b. 1945.