Maps

Nuruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, Italian Somaliland (now Somalia), to a merchant father and oral poet mother, and began self-imposed exile in the 1970s due to threats from the Somali government over his critical writing. He has lived and taught in numerous countries including the US, UK, Germany, Italy, and South Africa, and is renowned for his novels exploring themes of dictatorship, exile, feminism, and Somali identity, including trilogies such as "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship" and "Blood in the Sun." A perennial Nobel Prize nominee, he has received major awards like the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and currently resides in Minneapolis and Cape Town.