Narrative
The Life and Adventures of a Somali
Ibrahim Ismaa'il · 1928
Synopsis
Ibrahim Ismaa'il recounts his nomadic childhood with his mother, in the east of British Somaliland, at the time of the revolt of Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, then his wretched youth in Aden, where he dives for the coins thrown by travellers, his thefts, his work on a dhow, his clandestine crossings, a brief slavery in the hands of pirates and sixteen months on a British warship during the Great War. Arrived in Cardiff in 1919, he lives through the riots against black sailors there.
Context
The narrative was entrusted to Gaspard-Marin, who slightly corrected its English without adding anything to it, according to his preface, and presented it as the first life of a Somali told by himself. Completed in 1928, it found no publisher and remained unpublished until 1977, when the historian Richard Pankhurst, whose mother Sylvia had been close to Gaspard-Marin, published the surviving extracts in the journal Africa, in Rome. The text runs to about forty pages.
Who it is for
For those who like picaresque life stories that lead from the Somali desert to British ports.
Prizes and reception
The novelist Nadifa Mohamed sees it as the starting point of Somali literature in English, and compares it to the great picaresque novels of the twentieth century.
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