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In Secrets, Somalian author Nuruddin Farah has conjured a densely woven tale of betrayal, hidden agendas, and tangled relationships that is both a deeply personal story in and of itself and emblematic of the greater problems that continue to tear his country apart today. As a boy, young Kalaman used to creep into the bed of his childhood playmate, Sholoongo, and the two would engage in secret games of sexual discovery. A quarter of a century later, Kalaman is a businessman in Mogadishu on the eve of Somalia's civil war when Sholoongo arrives unexpectedly from America, bringing with her the reminder of an old, half-forgotten promise.
The secrets start early in Farah's novel: As a child, Kalaman questions even the origins of his own name, wondering if his unusual appellation in a world of Mohammeds and Abdous is an indication that he is not, after all, his father's child. Then there is the question of why his mother seems to dislike Sholoongo, whom his grandfather, Nonno, describes as "a duugan, that is to say, a baby to be buried." If Kalaman's origins are slightly murky, Sholoongo's are mired in mystery. One version has her abandoned by her mother and raised by lions. Whatever the truth of the girl's history, it is generally agreed by most people in Kalaman's village that she is probably a witch, and therefore trouble. Certainly Kalaman's mother, Damac, mistrusts her, believing her to have "animal powers" and designs on her son. Farah reveals all this in a tantalizing introductory chapter before fast-forwarding 25 years to Mogadishu in the early 1990s, one week before the official outbreak of civil war; Kalaman, now a successful young businessman, comes home to find the long-lost Sholoongo waiting for him in his apartment. Kalaman's first reaction to his old playmate's reappearance is fear: "There was no way of knowing what her visit might bring forth, what mysteries it might unravel, what manner of disastrous debates it might generate.... In other words, there was no telling how much havoc Sholoongo would cause." As it turns out, a great deal.
From here on out, Farah caroms between past and present, alternating chapters narrated by Kalaman, Damac, Sholoongo, and Nonno as he inexorably unravels a skein of lies, secrets, and corruption. As Kalaman learns the truth about himself and his family, that family's destruction mirrors Somalia's hellish descent into sectarian violence and long-simmering tribal hatreds. Politics, passion, sorcery, and myth are just a few of the threads Nuruddin Farah spins into mesmerizing whole cloth in this remarkable, award-winning novel out of Africa.
From Library Journal
In this new novel from the author of Close Sesame, Sardines, and Sweet and Sour Milk (all LJ 5/15/92), Farah tells the story of Kalaman, a young Somali man who seems plagued by the secrets of his childhood sexual acts. His former childhood infatuation, Sholoongo, appears at his apartment one day, and all the memories of what they did together overwhelm him. The author attempts to tie the problems of Kalaman and his family to those of modern-day Somalia, but the result is disjointed and hard to follow. At one point early on, Kalaman's father tells his son that Sholoongo is "as cheap as a popular rag dishing out pornography in the sophisticated idiom of a highbrow program," a comment that seems to sum up the whole novel. Not recommended.?Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OHCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, George Packer
What we hear from beginning to end is the daring, lush, urbane voice of the author.
Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Susan Salter Reynolds
The plot is rich and the language is superb, exotic and consciousness-expanding.... It's enough to make you homesick for a country that is not your own.
From Booklist
Kalaman is a successful Somalian businessman. At nearly 30, he owns his own computer firm and spends his spare time with his current girlfriend, Talaado. But his life is disrupted completely when his first love, Sholoongo, reenters his life, asking that he father her child. Appalled, Kalaman asks his family for advice, becomes enmeshed in family intrigue, and learns of lies of omission, deliberate indirections, discreet confidences, and hidden truths concerning his own childhood. He comes to question his identity, his sanity, and his understanding of his family. Paranoiac and voyeuristic, sexually charged and profoundly sinister, Secrets compellingly limns the social and biological structure of a family and the ways in which truth and lies both support that structure. It explores the limitations that secrets impose and the ways in which they ultimately reveal themselves, despite the intentions of their keepers. Farah is the author of several other novels, including Sweet and Sour Milk (1992), Sardines (1992), and Close Sesame (1992). Bonnie Johnston
From Kirkus Reviews
This intricate new novel, written in English by Somalian author Farah (Maps, 1987, etc.), was recently awarded the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The setting is Mogadiscio on the eve of Somalia's civil war, though the story begins a quarter century earlier in the village where its protagonist, Kalaman, enjoys a childhood blessed by the wisdom of his nurturing grandfather (``Nonno'') and the precocious sexual attentions of an older girl, Sholoongo, who is, at various times, his companion, mentor, and tormentor. Then the narrative shifts to the approximate present day. Kalaman, now 33, owns his own computer company, but seems reluctant to marry his girlfriend and father a child, to the frustration of his importunate widowed mother, Damac. When Sholoongo returns home from America (where she became famous as a ``shape-shifter'' and practitioner of magic), expecting Kalaman to give her a child, the consequent tensions unearth buried ``secrets'' the several characters have long labored to conceal (which are disclosed in later chapters narrated, in turn, by Nonno, Damac, and Sholoongo). The novel is amazingly densely written; its principals' actions, thoughts, and emotions are rendered with superb clarity and thoroughness in an enthralling psychodrama that, obedient to Nonno's dictum that ``it is in the nature of knots to come undone, and . . . of buried things to be dug up by Time,'' reveals the connections drawing together a tale of a vengeful elephant stalking a man, a stolen birth certificate, a ``secret marriage,'' and other shadowy mattersbringing painfully home to Kalaman the inextricable entwining of the personal and the political (. . . because all of us are holding our trump cards close to our chests, we can never know how best to serve this nation). Haunting scraps of tribal wisdom, animal fables, riddles, and parables blend seamlessly with the author's incisive analytical prose: a novel that's a genuineand genuinely disturbingmystery. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Publishers Weekly
A young, prosperous Somali businessman living in Mogadishu on the eve of Somalia's civil war receives an unwelcome visit from his childhood crush in this intricate, energetic novel from one of Africa's most prominent authors. Kalaman's former playmate, Sholoongo, has returned from America with the announced intention of having his baby. Confronted by this dangerous eruption of his past (his mother, Damac, insists that Sholoongo is a witch), Kalaman starts to investigate his family history. There he uncovers the reason that Damac hates Sholoongo: the latter seduced her husband (who may or may not be Kalaman's father). As the circumstances surrounding Kalaman's conception are revealed, the family itself seems to unravel--a microcosm of the clan hatred and violence that is tearing apart Somalia itself. In lyric prose that is rich and strange, Farah evokes a pansexual world where the coordinates of desire are as momentary and ad hoc as in a dream. In particular, Sholoongo seems to be a creature conjured out of a misogynist's nightmare: she is voraciously sexual, intermittently honest and an enigma to the very end.
Kirkus Reviews, starred review, April 1, 1998
Somalia's Nuruddin Farah offers up Secrets--in brilliant writing from one of the world's best This intricate new novel, written in English by Somalian author Farah, was recently awarded the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. The setting is Mogadiscio on the eve of Somalia's civil war, though the story begins a quarter century earlier in the village where its protagonist, Kalaman, enjoys a childhood blessed by the wisdom of his nurturing grandfather ("Nonno") and the precocious sexual attentions of an older girl, Sholoongo, who is, at various times, his companion, mentor, and tormentor. Then the narrative shifts to the approximate present day. Kalaman, now 33, owns his own computer company, but seems reluctant to marry his girlfriend and father a child, to the frustration of his importunate widowed mother, Damac. When Sholoongo returns home from America (where she became famous as a "shape-shifter" and practitioner of magic), expecting Kalaman to give her a child, the consequent tensions unearth buried "Secrets" the several characters have long labored to conceal (which are disclosed in later chapters narrated in turn by Nonno, Damac, and Sholoongo). The novel is amazingly densely written; its principals' actions, thoughts and emotions are rendered with superb clarity and thoroughness in an enthralling psychodrama that, obedient to Nonno's dictum that "it is the nature of knots to come undone, andof buried things to be dug up by Time," reveals the connections drawing together a tale of a vengeful elephant striking a man, a stolen birth certificate, a "secret marriage," and other shadowy matters--bringing painfully home to Kalaman the inextricable entwining of the personal and the political ("because all of us are holding our trump cards close to our chests, we can never know best to serve this nation"). Haunting scraps of tribal wisdom, animal fables, riddles, and parables blend seamlessly with the author's incisive analytical prose: a novel that's a genuine--and genuinely disturbing--mystery.
Book Description
From one of Africa's greatest living writers, a "hypnotic . . . murder mystery, family saga, magical realist thriller" (Newsday)
It is the week before the outbreak of the civil war in Somalia. Kalaman, a successful young businessman in Mogadiscio receives an unexpected house guest--the wild and sexually adventurous Sholoongo, his childhood crush returned from America. She announces that she intends to have his baby. Confronted by this dangerous interruption from his past, Kalaman starts to investigate his family's history, and uncovers the startling key to his own conception.
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as "one of the finest contemporary African novelists," Farah writes in a rhythmical, sensual prose reminiscent of Garcia Marquez's best fiction. Evoking the beauty and tragedy of Africa, Secrets is a remarkable portrait of a family disintegrating like its country, its ties dissolved by exposed lies and secrets.
"The plot is rich and the language is superb, exotic and consciousness-expanding. . . . It's enough to make you homesick for a country that is not your own." --Los Angeles Times
* Secrets was named one of the Best Novels of 1998 by the Los Angeles Times and the Voice Literary Supplement
* Farah was awarded the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, "widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel" (The New York Times)
* The New York Review of Books called Farah "the most important African novelist to emerge in the last twenty-five years [and] one of the most sophisticated voices in modern fiction."
About the Author
Nuruddin Farah is the author of the trilogy "Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship," which includes Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. Exiled since 1979, he was allowed to return to Somalia in 1996. He now lives in Kaduna, Nigeria, with his wife and two children.
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