Somaliland Novelist Wins Prestige Literary Award

[Jacaylbaro]

Somali novelist, Nadifa Mohamed, debuted novel won the Betty Trask Prize ($15,000), which is administrated by Society of the Authors in Britain. In her debut novel, Black Mamba Boy, Nadifa Mohamed chronicles her father’s extraordinary journey across Africa and to England. Betty Trask award prize usually is awarded to first novels written by authors under the age of 35.

 

Black Mamba Boy is biographical depiction of Nadifa Mohamed’s father childhood and his journey through many countries in East Africa, Yemen and all the way to England. Jama, the protagonist of the novel is a ten-year-old boy, who decides to leave Somaliland to Aden in Southern Yemen to earn more money after his mother passed away unexpectedly. In Aden Jama decides to spend what he earned working in streets of Aden doing odd jobs to find his never-seen father. The rumors that travel along clan lines report that his father is a driver for the British army somewhere in the North. So begins an epic journey by foot that will take Jama through war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt, Palestine and finally to the dreamy realms of Britain that he had heard about in Aden and Hargeysa.

 

In his travels, Jama witnesses scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of colonial wars in Africa. By camels’ carnival, by train, by truck but mainly by foot Jama crisscross the Red Sea towns and cities in search of working papers and a ship. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach.

 

Black Mamba Boy is a vibrant celebration of Nadifa’s family own history. But also it is valuable dedication and effort to document astonishing journeys of many Somali men, who crossed oceans to settle in remote and unfamiliar parts of the world. Somaliland migrant community is one of earliest African communities to settle in England working as semen and the shipyards.

 

The novel also touches on the brutal war that has forced Nadifa’s family and millions other Somalis out of the country. Like Jama’s incredible journey against mounting odds to find his root and father, the narrative of the story symbolizes yearning for a fatherland, a birthplace that gives one an identity and history. It is a story of immigrant family who is looking back to reassemble its own history through cross-section between personal narrative, memory and world history and politics. Like many other immigrant stories, the story of Jama is also a tale to bridge gab between generations.

 

Nadifa Mohamed, who is also nominated for the prestige Orange award for fiction, is working on her second novel provisionally entitled Milk and Peace. She was born in Hargeisa in 1981. She left Hargeisa when she was five years old at the break of the civil war. Mohamed is educated in the UK, studying History and Politics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She will take part in Hargeysa International Book Fair during this summer, which organized by the Somali Arts and Culture Organization, Kayd and redsea-online.com.

[Jacaylbaro]