Nuruddin Farah

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Nuruddin Farah, 2010

Nuruddin Farah (born November 24, 1945 in Baidoa ) is a Somali writer. He is considered one of the most important contemporary African writers. A preferred subject of his writing is the situation of women in post-colonial Somalia.

Life

Nuruddin Farah Hassan was born in Baidoa, then Italian Somaliland . He comes from a family with a poetic tradition: his mother Aleeli Faduma was a poet, as were two of his great-grandfathers. His father was a businessman. Farah grew up in the Ethiopian- ruled Ogaden and attended the Shashamanne School in Ethiopia and the Instituto Magistrale di Mogadiscio in Mogadishu , where the language of instruction was Italian . As a teenager he already spoke five languages: Somali , Amharic , Arabic , Italian and English .

After completing his advanced training, Farah worked briefly for the Ministry of Education in Mogadishu. At the age of 20 he wrote his first public longer story: Why Die So Soon? (Published periodically in a state newspaper, the Somali News , in 1965 ), which was widely accepted. From 1966 to 1969 Farah studied literature and philosophy at Panjab University in Chandigarh , India. During this time he wrote revues and began working on two manuscripts for short stories , which were rejected. In 1969 he married an Indian student in Delhi , which ended in 1972. After graduating from BA , he returned to Mogadishu to work as a teacher.

When the later dictator Siad Barre usurped the government with a coup in October 1969 and proclaimed socialist democracy in Somalia , the young Nuruddin Farah let himself be carried away by the general enthusiasm. Like many others, he hoped that the announced reforms would reduce the level of corruption and nepotism (nepotism) that Somalia has suffered since its independence in 1960 (see also History of Somalia ). However, Farah soon became a staunch critic of Siad Barres. Farah was denied publication of a piece written in 1969, A Dagger in Vacuum , by the revolutionary censorship authorities . Until 1973 Farah taught at various levels, including at the National University of Somalia . His writing career began with the novel From a Crooked Rib (1970), which was still written in India . The story of a nomadic girl fleeing to avoid an arranged wedding with an older man brought Farah international recognition.

In 1972 the Somali language received an orthography (spelling). Farah published excerpts from a novella in Somali in 1973, the first novella ever written in that language. Their full publication, however, was (as seditious accused) suppressed by the government. Farah wrote all earlier and later works in English.

In 1974 Nuruddin Farah, like many other intellectuals who feared the arbitrariness of the Somali regime, left his home country Somalia to study drama in London and Essex . When Farah was about to return home in 1976 (without an MA degree ), he was warned that the Somali government intended to arrest him for the content of his recently published novel A Naked Needle . Instead of returning, Farah chose exile , which would last more than 20 years. Farah himself always emphasized that his exile was only an immediate physical condition and that it was not he but the Somali dictatorship that was in exile.

Farah's later work consists of two novel trilogies: Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship and Blood in the Sun . Variations attacks the political corruption of many authoritarian post-colonial regimes in Africa and compares it to the horrors of European colonialism ; the trilogy is also devoted to gender relations and the practice of female circumcision . The first volume of the Variations trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk , was published in 1979, at the end of Farah's three-year stay as an English teacher and translator in Rome and Milan . Sweet and Sour Milk was awarded the English Speaking Literary Union Prize in 1980. While Farah was living in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981 , volume two came out, Sardines . This was followed by Close Sesame in 1983, during Farah's six-month visiting professorship at the University of Bayreuth .

Farah then moved between various African countries in a short time: He lived in Nigeria from 1981 to 1984 , then in Gambia until 1986 , in Sudan until 1989 , then two years in Uganda , one year in Ethiopia , and finally he moved back to Nigeria in 1992 . During this time he worked at various universities and institutes and interrupted his stays several times with short visits and scholarship positions in the USA and Europe. In 1998 Farah received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature .

Although the trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship was well received in a number of countries, it was Maps (1986), the first novel from the Blood in the Sun trilogy , that made Farah famous for good . Maps (awarded the Tucholsky Prize in Stockholm in 1991 ) is set during the Ogaden War in 1977. The novels Gifts (1993) and Secrets (1998) followed. In Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (2000), Farah portrays Somali refugees and emigrants in Africa and Europe, for which he was honored with the 2003 Sandro Onofri Prize for narrative reportage. The most recent works Links (2004) and Knots (2007) are part of a new trilogy dealing with the civil war in Somalia .

Nuruddin Farah married the Nigerian-British scientist Amina Mama in 1992 as a second marriage . The couple have two children. It has since separated. In 2010 he was appointed to the competition jury of the 60th Berlin International Film Festival . In 2020 Farah was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Literary work

Access to and a deeper understanding of the extensive and complex work of Nuruddin Farah is often sought through the history of Somalia and the socio-political circumstances of the country, as well as through Farah's personal biography. Farah's oeuvre opens up versatile readings on different topics. For example, one can read Farah as a “ feminist ” (cf. first novella: Why Die So Soon? 1965), see him as a social scientist or as a paradoxical postmodernist . Central topics and hypotheses with which the entire work works and which are developed are individual autonomy and people's social responsibility.

Main theme

The freedom of the individual to determine himself is a central concern and problem in Farah's work. For Farah, this freedom of the individual and his or her autonomy begins at the core in the everyday weaving of relationships between people, as well as in the constantly emerging social formations. There the self and its autonomy are formed and influenced. In order to work on this topic, Farah mainly serves Somali society and its history (almost all of Farah's works are located in Somalia). The action always takes place near the city.

Language and style

There is a certain vagueness in Farah's language, which is often associated with extensive metaphors . Voices and texts of others are implicitly reproduced in his texts. Farah himself sees language as a means of constructing and realizing human possibilities. As a reader of Farah, one finds oneself in a fictional world, which is given contours by reference to contemporary Somalia. The physical environment mostly includes interior views of different rooms. The fiction is ultimately held together by the plot. This usually moves towards a seemingly unsolvable riddle or mystery . Farah's uniqueness is shown above all by the conceptual nature of the protagonists ' behavior , which mostly dispenses with emotionality and psychological internal views. Farah does not tell about developments in the social milieu , he instead lets the reader participate in the development of the consciousness of his characters.

See also

Catalog raisonné

(In addition to these works, Farah has written numerous other short stories, plays and essays, some of which have remained unpublished.)

Variations on the Theme of An African Dictatorship (Trilogy)

Blood in the Sun (trilogy)

Young thing (trilogy)

literature

  • Patricia Alden among others: Nuruddin Farah. New York 1999, ISBN 0-8057-1667-X .
  • Kwame Anthony Appiah: For Nuruddin Farah. In: World Literature Today . 72, 4, Autumn 1998, pp. 700ff.
  • Thomas Hammer, among others: Retrospective African Studies. Le forum des acfricanistes. (= African Studies. Volume 11). Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-8258-3506-5 .
  • Rashidah Ishmaili: Encountering Nuruddin Farah. In: Black Renaissance. 6/7, 3/1, 2006, pp. 10ff.
  • Derek Wright (Ed.): Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. Africa World Press, 2002, ISBN 0-86543-918-4 .
  • Derek Wright (Ed.): The Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Bayreuth 2004, ISBN 3-927510-85-8 .

Web links

Commons : Nuruddin Farah  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Derek Wright (Ed.): The Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Bayreuth 2004, p. 14.
  2. Derek Wright (Ed.): The Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Bayreuth 2004, p. 5.
  3. ^ Derek Wright, Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. P. 5.
  4. Derek Wright (Ed.): Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. Africa World Press, 2002, p. 717.
  5. Rashidah Ishmaili: Encountering Nuruddin Farah. In: Black Renaissance. 2006; 6/7, 3/1, p. 11.
  6. Derek Wright (Ed.): The Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Bayreuth 2004, p. 10.
  7. Rashidah Ishmaili: Encountering Nuruddin Farah. In: Black Renaissance. 2006; 6/7, 3/1, p. 11ff.
  8. Maya Jaggi: A Combining of Gifts. An interview. In: Third World Quarterly. Volume 11, No. 3, 1989, p. 183. Quoted in: Derek Wright (Ed.): The Novels of Nuruddin Farah. Bayreuth 2004, p. 11.
  9. ^ Derek Wright, Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. P. 718.
  10. ^ Derek Wright, Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. P. 718.
  11. Kwame Anthony Appiah: For Nuruddin Farah. In: World Literature Today. Autumn 1998; 72, 4, pp. 700-702.
  12. ^ Derek Wright, Emerging Perspectives on Nuruddin Farah. P. 718.
  13. Rashidah Ishmaili: Encountering Nuruddin Farah. In: Black Renaissance. 2006; 6/7, 3/1, p. 13.
  14. Rashidah Ishmaili: Encountering Nuruddin Farah. In: Black Renaissance. 2006; 6/7, 3/1, p. 13.
  15. Kwame Anthony Appiah: For Nuruddin Farah. In: World Literature Today. Autumn 1998; 72, 4, p. 701.
  16. Kunle Ajibade: Nurudin Farah In Conversation: Good Fiction Is Never Far From the Truth. In: Premium Times Nigeria. December 7, 2018, accessed December 26, 2018 (UK English).
  17. Patricia Alden and others: Nuruddin Farah. New York 1999. Preface.
  18. Patricia Alden and others: Nuruddin Farah. New York 1999. Preface.
  19. Patricia Alden and others: Nuruddin Farah. New York 1999, p. 8ff.
  20. Patricia Alden and others: Nuruddin Farah. New York 1999, p. 13.