Nuruddin Farah's novels are an important contribution to African literature. He writes about his country, Somalia, a nation in the Horn of Africa with apparently no connection with the Commonwealth or the English-speaking world, so his books introduce readers to the political turmoil in a new state and to a culture new to English fiction. But the interest is more than regional: the books present the theme of individual freedom in the face of arbitrary power in a way that is relevant outside Africa as well, and they do so with an intellectual and poetic control that makes him one of the most stimulating prose writers in Africa today.

Born in 1945 in Baidoa to Hassan Farah (a merchant) and Aleeli Faduma Farah (a poet), Nuruddin Farah was educated at first in the Ogaden, the Somali-populated area now in Ethiopia. His first languages as a child were Somali, Amharic...