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Nadifa Mohamed (Somali: Nadiifa Maxamed, Arabic: نظيفة محمد) (born 1981 in Hargeisa, Somalia) is a Somali-British novelist.
Mohamed was born in 1981 in Hargeisa, Somalia.[1] Her father was a sailor in the merchant navy and her mother was a local landlady.[2] In 1986, she moved with her family to London for what was intended to be a temporary stay. However, the civil war broke out shortly afterwards in Somalia, so they remained in the UK.[3]
Mohamed later attended the University of Oxford, where she studied history and politics. In 2008, she visited Hargeisa for the first time in over a decade.[3]
Mohamed presently resides in London and is working on her third novel.[3]
Mohamed's first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2009), is a semi-biographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and '40s, during the colonial period.[4][5] She has said that "the novel grew out of a desire to learn more about my roots, to elucidate Somali history for a wider audience and to tell a story that I found fascinating."[2] A "fictionalized biography", it won critical and popular acclaim in countries as far away as Korea.[6] The book won the 2010 Betty Trask Award, and was shortlisted for numerous awards, including the 2010 Guardian First Book Award,[7] the 2010 Dylan Thomas Prize,[8] and the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.[9] It was also long-listed for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction.[10]
In 2013, Mohamed released her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls.[11] Set in Somalia on the eve of the civil war, it was published by Simon & Schuster.[12] Reviewing it in The Independent, Arifa Akbar said: "If Mohamed's first novel was about fathers and sons ... this one is essentially about mothers and daughters."[13]
In December 2013, Mohamed was one of thirty-six writer and translator participants at the Doha International Book Fair's Literary Translation Summit in Qatar.[14] She was also selected to represent Somalia in the Hay Festival's 2014 Africa39 literary project.[15]
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, Colleges of the University of Oxford, Jesus College, Oxford
Somaliland, British Somaliland, Neolithic, Ethiopia, Sudan
North Korea, Hanja, South Korea, Korean language, Buddhism
Library of Congress, Diana, Princess of Wales, Latin, Oclc, Integrated Authority File
Sudan, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen
Sheffield, London, Cardiff, Manchester, Islam
Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Poetry Society, Hisham Matar, Sade Adeniran, Commonwealth Prize
Commonwealth of Nations, Pound sterling, Society of Authors, Colin Bateman, Alex Garland
Sierra Leone, Africa, South Africa, Sudan, Togo