Novel
Maana-faay
Not translated into English
Maxamed Daahir Afrax · 1981
Synopsis
In Mogadishu in the seventies, Maana-faay Xaaji Muumin, an eighteen-year-old Banaadiri girl, intelligent and outspoken but without experience of life, clashes with her father, a merchant attached to the old ways. Around her move Jaamac Dhegey, a wealthy businessman with dubious ventures, his son Axmed, an engineer looking for a virtuous wife, and Beyddan Shabeel, who runs a brothel to take revenge on society. The novel depicts a prosperous city that corruption, drugs and prostitution are overtaking, and where the generations are at odds.
Context
The novel first appeared as a serial in 1979 in Xiddigta Oktoobar, a Mogadishu daily, where it aroused keen enthusiasm, then in book form in 1981, with a preface by Maxamed Aadan Sheekh, former rector of the National University. It was reissued in Stockholm in 1993, in London in 1997, then in 2018 and in 2022. The narrative uses flashback and interior monologue, and its dialogues render the speech of regions, of the town, of ages and of sexes; the book asserts that no progress is possible without a healthy society.
Who it is for
For readers who want to discover the modern Somali novel and life in Mogadishu in the years before the civil war.
Prizes and reception
It is regarded as a milestone of modern Somali fiction and as one of the best-known love stories in that language.
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