The novel “Crossbones,” from Somali author Nuruddin Farah, who lives part of the year in Minneapolis, is featured in a recent
issue of the New York Times Sunday Book Review.
“Some in the media may paint Somali pirates as womanizers with lavish tastes and an eye for Nairobi real estate, but Nuruddin Farah exposes the shallowness of such depictions in his 11th novel,” the review states.
One of the book’s central characters is a New York-based war correspondent who is part Somali and part Malaysian. With the help of his father-in-law, he embarks on an international journey to track down his teenage nephew who has left Minnesota to join the militant Islamic group al-Shabab.
Warfare and poverty in Somalia’s capital city of Mogadishu are also part of the story, which reviewer Hirsh Sawhney describes as “politically courageous and often gripping.”
Sawhney writes that the Farah “takes great pains to illuminate the roots of Somalia’s turmoil in a nuanced manner.”
All in all, the book is a “sophisticated introduction to present-day Somalia, and to the circle of poverty and violence that continues to blight the country,” Sawhney concludes.