Cosmopolitan Somalia: Place and Identity in Farah’s Maps and Links

Abstract

When Nuruddin Farah wrote “The Family House” for the 2008 edition of Transition, he had in mind a Somalia very different from that of his early fiction, the Somalia of SiyadBarre and errant patriarchal nationalism. In that early fiction, Farah challenged notions of both “Somali” and “Somalia,” along with the myths of linguistic, cultural, ethnic, and even biological unity purported by the Barre regime as the basis for the “natural” identity of Somali(a). According to many critics, then, a novel like Maps (1986) is a thoroughly deconstructive project, undercutting any stable subjectivities and the very notion of Somalia itself.

We’re scattered across the world, but the memory of our family houseunites us whenever we talk.

— Nuruddin Farah, “The Family House”