BOOK REVIEW: World-weary Farah sets out the lineaments of alienation
‘North of Dawn’ conveys the struggles of refugees in a post-9/11 world, even when hosts are welcoming and progressive
Novels seldom feel so contemporary: I meet Somalian author Nuruddin Farah in circumstances which darken the day, news having broken of the far-right terror attack in New Zealand which killed 49 people at prayer. His new book, North of Dawn, envelops issues which the news has brought acutely, awfully, into focus. I’m conscious, too, of how he must feel on a personal level, as the novel is dedicated to his sister, killed in a terrorist atrocity five years ago in Kabul. The plot revolves around an elderly Somalian couple now living in Oslo. They’re shocked to learn their son has perpetrated a suicide bombing. The retired diplomat, Mugdi, disowns his son’s memory, but his wife, Gacalo, wavers between less straightforward reactions, and feels compelled to bring her widowed daughter-in-law, Waliya, and her two teenage step-grandchildren, to Oslo. Family tensions surface almost from the outset: Gacalo’s empathy is reciprocated only by Waliya’s ungratefulness and her deepening fundamentali...
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