“It is through intertextuality that he extends his literary and philosophical referents to make postcolonial Somali culture part of a cosmopolitan discourse that is a crucial ingredient of what it means to be African in the modern world.”—Simon Gikandi, “Nuruddin Farah and Postcolonial Textuality” (WLT 72, Autumn 1998)
Nuruddin Farah was born in Baidoa, Somalia, in 1945 and now lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the author of twelve novels, which have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages. His mother was a traditional storyteller, and his father was a merchant who later worked for the British government as an interpreter. Farah grew up in a multilingual environment and learned to speak Somali, Amharic, English, Italian, and Arabic. When he began to write, Farah chose English as the language of his works. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib (1970), depicts the authoritarian role of patriarchy in African society and earned him praise as a “male feminist.” The publication of his second novel, A Naked Needle (1976), angered the dictatorial Somali regime and finally forced Farah into exile following several death threats. Farah would not return to live in Somalia again, but his lifelong pursuit has been to preserve his country through his writing. His other publications include Gifts (1993), Secrets (1997, which won the Prix de l’Astrolabe 2000), Crossbones (2011), Hiding in Plain Sight (2014), and North of Dawn (2018).
In his nominating statement to the 1998 Neustadt Jury, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o stated: “Nuruddin Farah questions all the oppressive stabilities, whether rooted in the family, the clan, the nation, or in the supranational claims of religion and political systems. He is a Somali writer, an African writer, an important voice in postcolonial modernism.”(WLT 72, Autumn 1998)
1998 Neustadt Jurors and Candidates |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| JURORS | FINALISTS | |||
| Meena Alexander (India) | Adrienne Rich (USA) | |||
| Richard Exner (Germany/USA) | R. S. Thomas (Wales) | |||
| Howard Goldblatt (USA) | Mo Yan (China) | |||
| Janette Turner Hospital (Australia) | Les Murray (Australia) | |||
| Shirley Geok-lin Lim (Malaysia) | Doris Lessing (England) | |||
| Norman Manea (Romania/USA) | Philip Roth (USA) | |||
| Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Kenya) | Nuruddin Farah (Somalia) | |||
| Raphaël Confiant (Martinique) | Frankétienne (Haiti) | |||
| Roberto Fernández Retamar (Cuba) | Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua) | |||
| Carolyn Forché (USA) | John Ashbery (USA) | |||
“I don’t miss Somalia because I carry it with me in the manner of an eagle high in the sky with a rich catch in the clutch of his claws. I am an eagle searching for a spot in the heavens where to alight and am cautious not to remain stationary, lest I should lose my gain.”
—Nuruddin Farah (Somalia), 1998 Neustadt Laureate
