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Nadifa Mohamed

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Nadifa Mohamed
نادئفا محمد
Born
Nadiifa Maxamed

1981 (age 42–43)
Hargeisa, Somalia
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Oxford
Occupationnovelist
MovementRealism, Historical fiction

Nadifa Mohamed ([Nadiifa Maxamed] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help), Arabic: نظيفة محمد) (born 1981 in Hargeisa, Somalia) is a Somali-British novelist.

Personal life

Mohamed was born in 1981 in Hargeisa, Somalia.[1] Her father was a sailor in the merchant navy and her mother was a local landlady.[2] In 1986, she moved with her family to London for what was intended to be a temporary stay. However, the civil war broke out shortly afterwards in Somalia, so they remained in the UK.[3]

Mohamed later attended the University of Oxford, where she studied history and politics. In 2008, she visited Hargeisa for the first time in over a decade.[3]

Mohamed presently resides in London and is working on her third novel.[3]

Literary career

Mohamed's first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2009), is a semi-biographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and '40s, during the colonial period.[4][5] Mohamed has said: "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."[2] It won the 2010 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2010 Guardian First Book Award,[6] the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize,[7] and the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.[8] The book was also long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.[9]

In 2013, Mohamed released her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls.[10] Set in Somalia on the eve of the civil war, it was published by Simon & Schuster.[11] Reviewing it in The Independent, Arifa Akbar said: "If Mohamed's first novel was about fathers and sons ... this one is essentially about mothers and daughters."[12]

Awards

Works

  • Black Mamba Boy (2009)
  • The Orchard of Lost Souls (2013)

References

  1. ^ Nadifa Mohamed, HarperCollins Author Profile
  2. ^ a b "WDN Interview with Nadifa Mohamed: The Author of Black Mamba Boy", WardheerNews, 21 April 2011.
  3. ^ a b c "Nadifa Mohamed". Simon and Schuster. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
  4. ^ "Black Mamba Boy, By Nadifa Mohamed", reviewed by Arifa Akbar, The Independent, 15 January 2010.
  5. ^ Hassan M. Abukar, "Black Mamba Boy: A Book Review", WardheerNews, 30 October 2010.
  6. ^ "Guardian first book award shortlist revealed", The Guardian, 29 October 2010
  7. ^ "Somali author Nadifa Mohamed up for first book prize", BBC, 28 October 2010.
  8. ^ "Shortlist announced for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2010". BookTrust. Archived from the original on November 27, 2010.
  9. ^ Black Mamba Boy, Orange Prize for Fiction.
  10. ^ Maya Jaggi, "The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed – review. The Betty Trask award winner takes on a complex history of Somalian civil unrest with a focus on women", The Guardian, 14 September 2013.
  11. ^ "The Orchard of Lost Souls". The Lady. Retrieved 26 August 2013. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ Arifa Akbar, "Book review: The Orchard of Lost Souls, By Nadifa Mohamed", The Independent, 16 August 2013.
  13. ^ Richard Lea (27 August 2010). "Guardian first book award longlist ranges around the world". The Guardian. Retrieved May 31, 2013.
  14. ^ Annalisa Quinn (April 15, 2013). "Granta's 'Best Of Young British Novelists' Shows A 'Disunited Kingdom'". Granta. Retrieved April 15, 2013.

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