[In the following essay, Okonkwo compares Farah's work to that of other African writers and asserts that Farah is unique in his artistry.]

The novels of Nuruddin Farah have been difficult to absorb into the recognized categories of African fiction. They exhibit none of the nostalgia for Africa's traditional past which characterizes the first set of novels of the Cultural Nationalism school. The exultation of the past, which has persisted in the novels of the 1970's, particularly in Armah's Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers, Soyinka's Season of Anomy and Ngugi's Petals of Blood where African traditional culture is recommended as a foundation for regenerative development of African societies has no place in Farah's novels. “He finds no virtue in traditional Somali social organization: indeed his two pet-hatreds seem to be the patriarch in the traditional Somali Muslim family and the concomitant subjection of women” （Peterson 98）. Thus, Farah's perspective differs radically from the thematic constant of the African novel. Not only is he more concerned with contemporary society, he is also critical of traditional culture in almost all its manifestations. Farah has developed an individual vision and techniques. Consequently, his work stands apart from the mainstream of African fictional development. When his specific individual approach has been taken into account, his novels can be conveniently categorized with those of post-independence critical realism and disillusionment, which anatomize the shortcomings of post-independence African social, political, and economic order.

The early writers' retrospective fixation with the past, and the over-idealization of African culture and traditions had earned an unequivocal condemnation in Soyinka's celebrated key-note address at the African-Scandinavian Writers' Conference of 1967 in Stockholm where he had exhorted that “The African writer needs an urgent release from the fascination of the past” （“The Writer” 19）. Rather than turn to the past, the critical realists fixed their gaze steadily on the contemporary scene. Their works manifest a clear insight into the needs of African society and literature, and therefore spearheaded a literary revolution. The writer as “the visionary of his people” had the duty to anticipate the future and warn his society of the chaos ahead; if need be, he should partake “in direct physical struggle” （Soyinka The Man Died 156–7） in a bid to reform society. In so far as Farah is concerned with the present, and an objective appraisal of its institutions, and overall state of its society and its peoples, he belongs to this class. But Farah is essentially an individualist with an individual vision and approach to his art. This may derive from a national characteristic, for “The Somali are intelligent, sophisticated, subtle, inordinately proud and extremely individualistic” （Lewis 150）. Although Farah's novels are essentially African, they are thematically relevant not only to the realities of African societies, but also to universal human conditions, in a manner which transcends the contemporary settings of his works.

The rarity of the Anglophone Somali writer has further placed Farah in a position where he cannot be examined alongside other Somali writers, because there have not emerged, as yet, other known Somali novelists. Farah's novels are distinctive for being set in a clearly nomadic and Islamic environment. The first three novels, From A Crooked Rib, A Naked Needle and Sweet and Sour Milk provide an insight into this hitherto unexplored culture.

An assiduous artistic craftsmanship further distinguishes Farah's novels. This, in addition to their other qualities, has contributed to his recognition by Western critics. Farah explores his themes of the individual and society, political corruption and revolution against a backdrop of a highly textured style. Some critics have compared him to James Joyce, adducing an affinity between Joyce's Ulysses and A Naked Needle. To this, the writer has replied:

“The people who influenced me range from reading the Koran, A Thousand and One Nights, and to my great grandfather, to anything that I could get my hands on, and they're actually different from time to time. So I don't remember my reading Joyce with a view to writing A Naked Needle, let me say. …”

（Lampley）

Farah who has won the English Speaking Union Prize has also been compared with Solzhenitsyn and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Other critics have described his work as “too complex for the ordinary African,” to which the writer has quipped with bristling defiance as he recounts a similar incident with the BBC Bush House, who commissioned him to write a play which will be comprehensible to an average African: “What do they mean by an average African? I am African” （Kitchner 61）.

Another set of critics have eulogized him for his style and narrative techniques. They are fascinated by the ornate assemblage of metaphors, similes, and his general verbal dexterity which make his prose sparkle like the scintillating stars which are frequently evoked in his writing:

At times he strains after effect, piling up descriptive conceits, but at others he slips so naturally into simile or metaphor that he suggests a primitive view of reality which distinguishes less rigidly between objective and subjective worlds. … The flavor this gives his writing, as well as its authentic background, makes him one of the more interesting new African writers.

（Hinde）

This is not difficult to understand for the Somali are a nation of bards, their poetry being one of their principal cultural achievements. They are essentially a people who still depend on the oral tradition. Farah's powerful and incisive novels, full of esoteric imagery, exotic symbolism and conveyed in a richly flavored language, owe their style to this rich poetic heritage. Farah's style has inevitably projected him to the forefront of African literary history alongside such writers as Achebe, Soyinka, Armah and Ngugi.

Farah's novels present an appraisal of Somali society, traditional and modern. They bring up for examination Islamic and traditional customs as they affect the life of women, like female circumcision, Islamic marriage laws, polygamous marriage, peremptory divorce （an exclusively male prerogative）, the subordination of the individual's life to community demands as well as the extreme materialism and corruption of the modern elite, and the modern fascist society. They expose the evils responsible for the present state of anomie in the African body politic. The writer sees the decadence of society, the unstable dictatorial and inhuman governments as the consequences of unbridled lust for power by a few megalomaniacs. Farah records and spotlights the nature of present day politics, thereby offering the reader an analytical insight into the lives and politics of his people. He deals with an age in which national politics have become progressively complex on the African continent and many people have become more politically conscious. He leaves one in no doubt about his attitude to the Jomo Kenyattas, the Idi Amins, and the Siyad Barres of Africa.

Farah's interest centers around the individual and his quest for personal and political freedom in the traditional and Revolutionary State. His first novel, From a Crooked Rib （1968）, discusses the feminine plight, and the general odds against the female in a traditional, Islamic cultural environment. His second, A Naked Needle （1976）, explores the search by a number of individual characters for self-fulfillment within the societal and political set-up of Somalia. The two books of his （proposed） trilogy, Sweet and Sour Milk （1979）, and Sardines （1981）, highlight the repressive and horrifying aspects of the Somalian Military Regime. These novels are vitally relevant because their themes transcend their narrow sociological and historical confines. Farah triumphs as the “voice of the visioner,” as a critic of society because of the dialectical relation of his artistic creativity to social values. Although his novels manifest a deep political consciousness, he is careful not to adopt an ideological stance, as Soyinka, Ngugi, Armah, and Ousmane have done. He has avoided the conflict which often arises in the novel as an art form when it is made to carry the weight of political ideology. Rather than manipulate the techniques of the novel for the benefit of politics （in spite of his declared intention to provide counter propaganda to that of the repressive Somalian Regime） he has lived up to the ideals of the fictive artist “selectively taking the facts of existence and imposing order and form upon them in an aesthetic pattern” （Farah 11）. Artistically, Farah's novels manifest a degree of stylistic complexity and show signs of moving in the direction of such twentieth-century artists as James Joyce, whose works exhibit a more hermetic and convoluted style.

From A Crooked Rib takes its cue from the fact that in the society of its setting, a woman is the property of the man on whom she depends for livelihood and protection—father, brother, husband, or a relation. She has no individual rights. From A Crooked Rib questions the validity of such an arrangement, from a humanistic point of view. Its chief protagonist, Ebla, has been nurtured entirely in a traditional nomadic pastoral community. Farah endows her with innate intelligence, courage, resilience and perseverance, and through her raises numerous sensitive questions about women in this type of society—questions about female circumcision, choice of a marriage partner, divorce, attitude to polygamous marriage, husband and wife relationships, marital infidelity. The metamorphosis of this intelligent village girl underscores vividly her extreme individualistic spirit. Quite early in her development, Ebla exhibits a tremendous consciousness of her individual rights. The entire story is a delineation of her experiences as she attempts to emancipate herself from circumscribing traditional and Muslim social obligations. Ebla's intelligence and individualism are at complete variance with the prescribed confinements of her cultural and religious environment. Her rebelliousness induces her to escape from the narrow and restrictive confines of her jes in a bid to assert her individuality and be appreciated as a human being “to break away the ropes society had wrapped around her and to be free and be herself” （Crooked Rib 12）. The novel has been acclaimed as manifesting a feminist viewpoint. Charles Larson described it as “one of the most complete pictures of a woman we have seen in African fiction,” which may be an over-statement. Male and female writers have variously featured women as their central characters. Flora Nwapa's Efuru and Idu, Elechi Amadi's The Concubine, John Munonye's The Only Son, Sembene Ousmane's “Her Three Days” and Xala, or Buchi Emecheta's Bride Price, Slave Girl and The Joys of Motherhood have all explored the life of women in both the modern and traditional African society, but none of them had championed the cause of women against social restrictions as Farah has done. What is significant is that “Farah has lifted the veil customarily drawn across women's struggles in the face of larger revolutionary causes and revealed the fallacy of partial freedom” （Bryce）. The writers whose works come near Farah's viewpoint are Sembene Ousmane, Buchi Emecheta, and Mariama Ba （So Long A Letter）.

From A Crooked Rib has been able, in spite of its simple linear plot, to achieve a commendable thematic impression, through style and structure. The story of Ebla's quest for freedom and self-fulfillment and her journey towards discovery is told in a narrative style that is almost out of fashion. An adroitly manipulated naive narrator communicates the story. The focus is on Ebla as she unveils the deep recesses of her mind in this picaresque adventure. The innocent ingenuity of Ebla is conveyed not only in her own thoughts and utterances, which predominate in the novel, but in the naiveté which pervades the narrative voice itself:

The lives of these people depend upon that of their herds. The lives of the herds depended upon the plentiness or the scarcity of green grass. But would one be justified in saying that their existence depended upon green pastures directly or indirectly? Yes: life depended on green pastures.

（Crooked Rib 7）

This narrative technique is reminiscent of Mongo Beti's The Poor Christ of Bomba whose central feature is Father Drumont's tour of Tala and the sexual growth of Dennis, the naive narrator, told in the picaresque mode, as Beti delineates the moral development of the participants. Oyono's Houseboy succeeds also through the employment of the inexperienced, naive Toundi as narrator. The straightforward story line progresses without resort to the flashback technique, although the novel is introduced by a prologue. The major ideas are illuminated through a physical and psychological exploration of the protagonists. The novel is divided into four parts, each opened by a proverbial epigraph, each a dramatization of a major movement in the overall action. The action itself takes its cue from the major epigraph which introduces the novel. It is a Somali proverb: “God created woman from a Crooked Rib; and anyone who trieth to straighten it, breaketh it,” which the chief protagonist, Ebla, sets out to disprove and succeeds up to a point. Ebla's vision was clear to her. She rebels, not at the idea of being a woman, but at the unfair distribution of duties which demoted the status of women.

Farah employs a deep ironic device in the exploration of his theme, and achieves a detachment through the use of his naive narrator which is an advantage, for “The observing novelist is detached and through his detachment, he is able to make each statement of his narrative to have double meaning” （Cook 96）. Although he does not overtly project his views, Farah's voice can be heard in many passages, as in:

She desired more than anything, to shy away, like a cock, which has unknotted itself from the string tying its leg to the wall. She wanted to go away from the duty of women. … She loathed this discrimination between sexes.

[Crooked Rib n.p.]

Like the ironic title of Emecheta's Joys of Motherhood, From A Crooked Rib is ironic, for Ebla succeeds in demonstrating the feminine capability for self-assertion, independence, and achievement. Thus Farah intimates a cultural revolution which is inevitable in the changing circumstances of Africa.

By contrast, the plot of the second novel, A Naked Needle （1976） is complicated. Koschin, its chief protagonist is an urbanized, westernized young teacher who has studied in England. The complexity of A Naked Needle's structure is designed to match his sophistication. Like Ebla, Koschin is passionately committed to the preservation of his freedom which at the beginning of the novel is being threatened by the evolving events in his country, and by the imminent arrival of his English girlfriend whom he has promised to marry in the event of both of them remaining single after two years of their parting. Farah's formal experiments here are radical. The novel opens with a prelude, while the rest of the plot is unfolded in six movements. In a lengthy interior monologue, Koschin states his obsession with issues which remorselessly impinge on his individual freedom.

When A Naked Needle was published in 1976, the Somalian Revolution was still fresh in its impetus before experience reveals the world of difference between “the theory and practice of an ideology which was meant to convert the country into a truly independent socialist state” （Sanders）. Farah directs the readers' attention to the enervating state of existence of the country's elite, painting kaleidoscopic pictures of the country's decadence and political, socio-economic malaise. Like Soyinka, Ousmane, Ngugi, and Armah, he compels the readers' perceptive sensibility to react critically to the uglier aspects of contemporary African life. Like Armah and Ouologuem, Farah is undeterred by negative arguments that his posture of disillusionment, almost pathologically morbid in its conception of society's malaise, is likely to dishonor the image and psyche of the African. His preoccupation is with the individual and his right to a meaningful existence; and this presupposes a just and well-ordered society.

A Naked Needle presents a crucial day in the life of its chief protagonist, Koschin Qoudham, who from all indications is a zealous patriot, transparently loyal to the Revolution just ushered in by a bloodless coup. He is first introduced as he muses in his squalid apartment like Teacher in Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Later his engagements, actions, thoughts, and involvements during the day are enacted. Using the first person narrative technique, Farah reveals Koschin and his pronouncements of his views regarding many aspects of life, the problems of his close acquaintances, and the Revolution which he considers “a pill that tastes bitter, the benefits of which are felt only when one has gone through the preliminary pain and pestilence” （Naked Needle 4）. On a more personal level, Koschin's obsession with his freedom is manifested in his attempts to extricate himself from religious and familial obligations. He refrains from close involvement in the marriage problems of his friends, like Barbara and Mohammed, Mildred and Barre; and contrives to keep himself as distant as possible from the newly-arrived Nancy. Koschin succeeds in depriving himself of any real, meaningful relationship with individuals around him. To a clansman who approaches him for a solidarity levy, he brusquely announces: “I am afraid I do not owe any loyalty to any tribe. … [T]ell the other members of your tribe that I owe no loyalty to any tribe, and never have” （Naked Needle 14–15）. In the course of the day, Koschin resigns his teaching appointment to demonstrate his condemnation of the Headmaster's misdemeanor with a female student. This break with the school authorities signals his complete alienation from all the restraining elements of society, like the family, social and cultural ties necessary for the proper functioning of the individual in society.

The narrative technique of From A Crooked Rib relies heavily on the shifting point of view. Farah had already started interspersing dialogue with monologue as he constantly moves between what Ebla thinks and what she says. In A Naked Needle, the device of the interior monologue becomes the author's dominant mode of narration. Through this device, the reader perceives the inner consciousness of Koschin. The opening chapters, for instance, abound in monologues addressed to Nancy even before her arrival to Somalia. In his nervous dilemma, Koschin addresses Nancy whom he has not seen for two years, revealing his hope and dread that her arrival will not force him to alter his Bohemian life style:

With patience, we may be able to come to some sort of agreement, Nancy. Some sort, I say. You and I. Between ourselves.

An epilogue that spoils the strong point of a novel, that is what you are to me, Nancy. However, I do hope that I am wrong in my judgment: that you have changed since last we met.

（Naked Needle 2）

A significant aspect of style which Farah employs is the dialogue. Like the protagonists of Soyinka's The Interpreters, Koschin likes to get to the root of facts and events. Therefore he constantly discusses with Barbara, Barre, Mohammed, Nancy and others with whom he interacts. His tour around Mogadiscio with Nancy provides priceless opportunity to demonstrate his capacity for commentary in monologues interspersed with dialogue （with Nancy）. This aspect of Farah's novel has been compared to James Joyce's art in Ulysses. The peregrinations around the splendors, slums, treasures, as well as the hidden infirmities of this ancient settlement recall Bloom's pilgrimage around Dublin. From Koschin's detached, humorous, and mockingly ironic commentary emerges a sharp picture of the glory and squalor that is Mogadiscio. It is a picture of a desperately poor society, with only one real city and a few thousand meters of metaled roads, full of poverty, prostitutes, donkeys, and tea-shops. The narrow streets of Mogadiscio in movement five become the battlegrounds between the Donkeymen with their donkey waters, the donkeymen having become denaturalized, and what is more, as obstinate as their beasts （Naked Needle 96）.

Farah is able to expose the abdication of the corruptly rich bureaucrats and elite from their responsibilities to the generality of the populace. He brings these together in a fatuously artificial and sumptuous party at Dulmar's where they reveal their affections, vulgarity, and insensitivity to the real urgent issues of their country and its people. Rather they habitually “warm themselves up with wine, and women, while the age-old poverty, ignorance, and idiocy hang over them like shadows” （135）.

From the largely social, introspective form of A Naked Needle, Farah moves on to his essentially political novels, Sweet and Sour Milk, 1979, and Sardines （1981）. Farah once claimed:

I see my writing as an alternative to the propaganda that the state machinery in Somalia produces and puts on the shelves. An alternative and true record of history. I do not know if I am saying the truth, but I'm simply describing the truth as I see it, the truth as I know it, and I feel absolutely responsible for every word I have written.

（Lampley）

Sweet and Sour Milk and Sardines reflect the terror and the inhumanity which are the hallmarks of a tyrannical and dictatorial fascist state. They register with suffocating intimacy, the brutality, suspicion, mental and physical degradation, which are consequent upon the apparatus of terror being literally in the family. The General has turned the family Patriarchs into his instruments of suppression. There is no longer the tragi-comedy of revolutionary rhetoric in the midst of gross underdevelopment found in A Naked Needle. Perfected systems of power manipulation, dawn disappearances of citizens, detention, exile, torture and death, are what the novels present in intimate and minute details. The Koschin of A Naked Needle is now in detention and obviously in grave danger of his life. The situation in the novel is such that

One cannot disguise the fact that our people have been made suspicious of one another, that this regime has given a two-handled sword, sharp at both ends to each of us. … Nothing escapes the close scrutiny of the security system whose planted ears have sprouted in every homestead.

（Naked Needle 138–9）

The country having been “sold” to the Soviets, is backed by its example and “technical assistance.” Inevitably, a resistant group has been formed to spread counter information against the false revolutionary government. Driven underground, it operates clandestinely. Most committed and sensitive individuals in the state have gravitated around this movement. From there emanates such anti-government literature as the memorandum found hidden under Soyaan's pillow, or those bills posted on the “walls of dawn.”

The novels exhibit Farah's masterly control of his subject-matter. Artistic economy is largely attained through the exploitation of symbols that depict the modern political chaos. All over the country, the militia men in their green uniform, symbolize the General's repressive tool. They beat the drum and sing the sycophancies of the revolution's successes: “The Marxist-Leninist Islamic Revolution. … Long live the General, the Father of this nation” （Naked Needle 187）. Another symbol of oppression is the Security Services which recruit their main corps from illiterate men and women to eavesdrop on conversation and report verbatim what they think they heard when they enter a shop or a house. They have power to arrest without warrants. Prisons are overpopulated and no records are kept about most of the prisoners. As a result a good percentage of the country's intellectuals and professionals languish in prisons, while in their place, Soviet technocrats and “Cuban sugar-cane experts” are employed.

Farah's political novels are anatomizations of a system of protected disorder, immediate and actual, “a dismantling of the organic elements of an old society family, religion, affections, passions, neighborhood, customs, re-assembled in a bogus structure” （Ewen）. Against the ethics of political violence, the weak have no other means of survival other than either to collaborate with the authorities or face elimination. Thus it is easy for Keynaan, the patriarch in Sweet and Sour Milk to blatantly desecrate the memory of his dead son, by acquiescing in the shameful lie that Soyaan's last words were in praise of the General. On the contrary, Soyaan had considered the General “a usurper, a tribalist, a fascist of the first grade, a Dionysius.” With Soyaan eliminated by the agents of the repressive government, his twin brother, Loyaan, is left to discover the culprits.

In this novel, Farah once again uses the naive narrator in the person of Loyaan who is not as politically volatile as his brother, Soyaan. The novel depends on flashbacks and the stream of consciousness technique for the evocation of past events and the psychological exploration of its major characters. As in Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat and Petals of Blood （which it resembles by the manipulation of the techniques of the detective novel） reminiscences and recreations of past events help Loyaan to piece together information gathered from close associates of Soyaan. Sometimes Loyaan steps too close on the hidden enemies' toes. Loyaan is made to come in contact with characters like Margaritta （Soyaan's mistress）, Dr. Ahmed-Wellie, Mulki, the Minister （Soyaan's rival for Margaritta's affections） who is also an agent of the General. Farah allows the reader to form opinions and respond to each of the characters as they are exposed. When the novel closes, Loyaan is silenced by being forcibly sent on a diplomatic mission abroad. As in A Naked Needle, the conflicts in the novel are unresolved, for Loyaan's investigations yield no positive conclusive result.

Sardines continues the bitter attack on the sinister activities of the fascist state. Parallel to the political theme is the novel's remarkable focus on a group of Somalian women and their struggle for freedom from religious, social, political and conventional thralldom. The novel opens with a long interior monologue by the chief protagonist, Medina, as she builds her imaginative architectural structures which she peoples with fantasy occupants. Her compartmentalized mansion is a physical reaction to a basic psychological need for self-realization. The narrative technique depends largely on the exploration of the minds of the principal characters, and thus to determine the hidden motives for their actions. A good illustration of this device is in the exposition of Medina's inner conflict as she debates and contemplates her proposal to abandon her home to Idil, her mother-in-law, and Samater, her husband. In a cinemato-graphic manner, Medina's mental state is focused upon as she compares Idil's tyranny with the General's:

The General's power and I are like two lizards engaged in a vararian dance of death—the emphasis on power as a system, power as a function. … Was Idil part and parcel of that power? The sky would fall on anyone who upset a pillar of society—in this case Idil.

（Sardines 52）

Farah's style and narrative technique seem designed to give the widest scope for understanding the processes through which his characters arrive at their decisions and actions. He attempts to give a naturalistic expression to the idea of his characters' untrammeled freedom, to reflect the flexibility with which they approach the challenges of life. He therefore exposes their introspections and self-questionings, making them indulge in “interminable self-analysis of behavior, politics, and motivation” （Pilling）. When he employs the omniscient narrator, it is to give a sharper edge to his point of view, by assuming omniscience and describing his characters from his inner perceptions of them. All through the novels, interior monologue is interspersed with dialogue. The total effect is a masterly control of his themes and point of view, even if the plot wavers from action to action which often gives a sense of indecision and incompleteness. Farah's works, viewed alongside other African writers, are refreshing because of his determination to write “like a novelist rather than a preacher.”

Works Cited

Bryce, Jane. “Sardines by Nuruddin Farah,” The Leveller, January 22, 1982.

Cook, Albert. The Meaning of Fiction, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960.

Ewen, D. R. “Nuruddin Farah, Sweet and Sour Milk,” World Literature Written in English, [n.v., n.d., n.p.]

Farah, Nuruddin. “The Creative Writer and the Politician,” The Guardian, Wednesday, September 7, 1983, p. 11.

Hinde, Thomas. “The Walls of Dawn,” Sunday Telegraph, 29th November, 1981, n.p.

Kitchner, Julie. “Author in Search of an Identity,” New Africa, No. 171, December 1981, [n.p.].

Lampley, James. “A View of Home from Outside,” Interview in Africa No. 124, December 1981, [n.p.].

Larson, Charles. “From A Crooked Rib” Books Abroad. [n.p.: n.d].

Lewis, I. M. Peoples of the Horns of Africa, London: International African Institute, 1955, p. 150.

Peterson, Karen Holst. “The Personal and The Political: The Case of Nuruddin Farah,” Ariel Vol. 12, No. 3, July 1981, [n.p.].

Pilling, Jane. Time Out, 4th December, 1981, [n.p.].

Reinhard, W. Sander. “Nuruddin Farah, A Naked Needle,” World Literature Today, Winter, 1979, [n.p.].

Sharpnel, Norman. “In a hell of a state,” The Guardian, December, 1981, [n.p.]

Soyinka, Wole. “The Writer in a Modern African State,” The Writer in Modern Africa, ed. Per Wastberg, New York, Africana Publishing Corporation, 1969.

———. The Man Died, Hammondsworth, Penguin Books, 1975.