Narrative
Far from Mogadishu
Lontano da Mogadiscio
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel · 1994
Synopsis
Shirin Ramzanali Fazel looks back on her childhood in Mogadishu, where she attended the Italian school, on her arrival in Italy in 1971 and on what a Black woman experienced there, then on her travels. Combining memories, historical reflections and poems, the book follows, in six parts, as many themes and periods: war-torn Somalia, with the devastation of Mogadishu in the early years of the civil war, the way Italians look at Somalia and Africa, identity and commitment.
Context
Published in 1994 by Datanews in Rome, with an introduction by Alessandra Atti di Sarro, the book was reprinted in 1997 and 1999, then reissued in 2013 in a bilingual Italian and English edition, revised and expanded with pages on settling in England; the author published it in English in 2016. Simone Brioni places it among the first texts in Italian to tell colonial history from the point of view of the colonised, alongside those of Ribka Sibhatu and Maria Abbebù Viarengo, and notes a structure that follows emotion more than chronology.
Who it is for
For those interested in exile narratives and in a Somali woman's view of Italy, the former colonial power.
Prizes and reception
It is regarded as one of the first postcolonial texts written in Italian and as a milestone in Italy's cultural decolonisation.
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