Hiding in Plain Sight

October 20, 2014
Somali writer Farah's (Crossbones) 12th novel takes on religious extremism and sexual politics in Africa in this bold but ponderous novel about a woman reassembling her family in the wake of a tragic event. After her older half-brother, Aar, a high-ranking UN official, is killed in a terrorist attack on the organization's headquarters in Mogadiscio, Somalia, the 35-year-old, half-Italian, half-Somali Bella is forced to put her photography career on hold and travel to Nairobi, where Aar's teenage children, Salif and Dahaba, live. There, she adjusts to her new role of surrogate mother and shares her grief with family friends and Aar's former lover, a Swedish UN official named Gunilla, while waging a custody battle with Aar's estranged wife, Valerie, who arrives with the woman for whom she left her family 10 years earlier, Padmini. While the tension between Valerie and Bella is compelling, and Valerie and Padmini's experiences as lesbians living in Africa illuminating, the novel otherwise suffers from a lack of forward movement. Whole sections are spent on quotidian scenes that do nothing to develop the story or characters. Many of the more interesting threads and subplots remain underdeveloped, such as the attack that kills Aar and one about a friend of Valerie and Padmini's whose gay bar in Nairobi is raided, leaving the reader wishing Farah had more tightly focused his narrative.

Starred review from October 15, 2014
A domestic drama is a prism illuminating the often conflicting cultural and social temperaments of contemporary Africa.Set primarily in Nairobi, this 12th novel by Somali-born Farah (Crossbones, 2011, etc.) sifts through the personal and emotional fallout of a terrorist attack in Mogadishu that kills a U.N. official who emigrated from his native Somalia decades before. His grief-stricken sister Bella, a model-turned-professional photographer, decides to leave behind her own expatriate life in Europe and resettle in Kenya, where she will honor her brother's wishes by caring for his teenage son, Salif, and daughter, Dahaba. Saying the least, this arrangement does not please their brash, self-centered mother, Valerie, who arrives in Nairobi with her lesbian lover, Padmini, to stake her claim upon the children, who prefer their more worldly and levelheaded aunt as a legal guardian. With delicacy and compassion, Farah, whose own sister was killed earlier this year in a terrorist bombing while working for UNICEF, fashions a domestic chamber piece where motives, yearnings and regrets intersect among these complex, volatile personalities against a wider backdrop of religious and cultural conflict, social and political upheaval, and even "family values" in post-millennial Africa. Even the most offhand conversations Bella and the other major characters have with Nairobi citizens of varied ages and genders throw unexpected and necessary light upon aspects of a society that the rest of the world knows, or cares, relatively little about. (It's a solid bet that most readers outside Africa aren't aware of Kenyans' bigotry toward the Somalis choosing to live in their country.) Throughout this novel's big and small incidents, Farah maintains a narrative composure that shuns typecasting, reserves judgment and keeps his readers alert to whatever hidden graces emerge from even the most difficult characters. An unassuming triumph of straightforward, topical storytelling that both adds to and augments a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize.

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October 15, 2014
Singular and willful Somali Italian Bella, an internationally acclaimed photographer, is exceptionally close to her Somali half brother, Aar, a UN official. When Aar is killed in a terrorist bombing, she rushes to dangerously chaotic Nairobi, where he lived with his teenage son and daughter, all long estranged from Aar's British wife, Valerie, who abandoned them for another woman. Bella is determined to raise her beloved nephew and niece, but Valerie, notoriously selfish and unreasonable, insists on reclaiming the children she hardly knows, arriving in Nairobi with her Indian lover, both of them newly released from jail in Uganda, where homosexuality is a crime. Distinguished Somali writer Farah (Crossbones, 2011) subtly infuses this power struggle within a traumatized cosmopolitan family with the obdurate complexities of the geopolitical battles that surround them. Drawing us deeply into their daily conflicts and negotiations and Bella's masterful pursuit of reconciliation and healing, Farah adeptly weaves into this emotionally intricate, quietly suspenseful story a call for gay rights in Africa, testimony to the strength and wisdom of women, and poetic musings on photography's role in shaping memories and identity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

December 1, 2014

When Aar, a Somali-born UN worker stationed in Mogadiscio, is killed by a Shabaab suicide bomb, his half-sister, Bella, must make a crucial decision under devastating circumstances. A successful photojournalist living in Rome, Bella is sophisticated and independent. But as executor of Aar's estate, her new responsibilities include caring for Aar's teenage children: her niece, Dahaba; and precocious nephew, Salif. Their mother, who abandoned the family years ago for her lesbian lover, seems amenable to a rapprochement. Still mourning, Bella boards the flight to Aar's home in Nairobi, Kenya, with trepidation, unsure if she's equipped to be a mother to Dahaba and Salif and wary of her future as a secular Somali woman in Kenya. As they navigate new familial terrain, the characters each reflects Farah's own clear-eyed assessment of the failings of his homeland, among them the social strictures, judicial corruption, and crowded infrastructure. VERDICT Considered one of the most important and prolific writers out of Africa, Farah, who now teaches at Bard College, eloquently addressed the challenge of the Somali diaspora in his dense "Past Imperfect" trilogy, which ended with the publication of Crossbones. This more accessible novel will appeal to lovers of international literature but also to readers drawn to the dynamics of families in flux. [See Prepub Alert, 5/19/14.]--Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2014

Among Africa's most distinguished novelists, Somali-born novelist Farah was forced into exile after receiving death threats following the 1975 publication of his second novel, A Naked Needle; currently, he divides his time between South Africa and America, teaching at Bard College. His new novel features Bella, a coolly inscrutable photographer of international renown unsettled when political extremists kill her Mogadishu-based half-brother, with whom she shares a Somali mother. Leaving Rome for Nairobi, where her teenage niece and nephew are in boarding school, she's trying to decide whether she can and should take over their care when the mother who had essentially abandoned them reappears. A study of blended political, social, and personal responsibilities, extending Farah's reach.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2014

Somalian novelist Farah tells the story of a successful photographer whose half-brother is murdered by political extremists in Mogadiscio and whose quest for his children, enrolled in boarding school in Nairobi, mirrors the region's political uncertainty. (Prepub Alert, 5/19/14)

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.