Literary places in Mogadishu

Maps

Nuruddin Farah

Farah's Somalia is a country arguing with its own map. An orphan boy is raised by a woman in the Ogaden, the Somali-speaking region held by Ethiopia, during the 1977 war for it; he is then sent south to the capital to grow up among relatives who debate blood, nation and belonging. The map stretches across the Horn, from the Shebelle valley around Kallafo to the ocean at Mogadishu, roughly eight hundred kilometres apart.

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