Novel · A way to begin
Sweet and Sour Milk
Nuruddin Farah · 1979
Synopsis
In Mogadishu, Soyaan, a government employee, dies suddenly of an illness that takes him in a single day, and the family refuses an autopsy. His twin Loyaan, a dentist trained in the West, discovers that he knew almost nothing about his brother: an article hostile to the regime is hidden in his pillowcase, a minister asks questions at the burial, and the authorities turn the dead man into a hero, attributing to him last words he never spoke. Loyaan searches for the reasons for this death, while their father, Keynaan, plays along.
Context
Written in Rome, in the early years of exile, the novel opens the trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, which Sardines and Close Sesame continue. It reads as an investigation conducted mostly from the inside, and critics have noted that the family becomes the most threatening instrument of state control: the father collaborates with the regime by making his son an official hero. Christian Surber translated it into French for Éditions Zoé, in Geneva, in 1994.
Who it is for
For readers who like political novels built as an investigation, at the heart of a family under the dictatorship.
Prizes and reception
Awarded in 1980 the literary prize of the English-Speaking Union, it led World Literature Today to say that Farah was becoming one of the great novelists of his continent.
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