Books from Somalia
26 popular somali books
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
The target of the Read Around The World Challenge is to read at least one book written by an author from each and every country in the world.
All books that are listed here as part of the "Read Around Africa Challenge" were written by authors from Somalia.
Find a great book for the next part of your reading journey around the world from this book list. The following popular books have been recommended so far.
11.
Description:
Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story. An advocate for free speech and women's rights, Hirsi Ali lives under armed protection because of her outspoken criticism of the Islamic faith in which she was raised.
12.
Keeping Hope Alive : One Woman: 90,000 Lives Changed by Dr. Hawa Abdi EN
Description:
The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for over 20 years in Somalia. Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Mother Teresa of Somalia" and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is the founder of a massive camp for internally displaced people located a few miles from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia. Since 1991, when the Somali government collapsed, famine struck, and aid groups fled, she has dedicated herself to providing help for people whose lives have been shattered by violence and poverty. She turned her 1300 acres of farmland int... continue
13.
Description:
From the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn comes "a beautiful, hopeful novel about one woman's return to war-ravaged Mogadishu" (Time) Called "one of the most sophisticated voices in modern fiction" (The New York Review of Books), Nuruddin Farah is widely recognized as a literary genius. He proves it yet again with Knots, the story of a woman who returns to her roots and discovers much more than herself. Born in Somalia but raised in North America, Cambara flees a failed marriage by traveling to Mogadishu. And there, amid the devastation and brutality, she finds that her most u... continue
14.
Description:
From the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip—his last residence there was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom. Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother’s grave, Jeebleh is asked to investiga... continue
17.
Maps by Nuruddin Farah EN
Description:
A Somali youth is torn between duty to family and country. On the one hand Askar, an orphan, should look after his foster mother, on the other he wants to be a man and emulate his father who died fighting the Ethiopians. By an English-speaking Somali writer, author of Secrets.
18.
Description:
The author's emotional journey to freedom to build a new life following her flight from a tribal world that limits women's every thought and action.
19.
North of Dawn : A Novel by Nuruddin Farah EN
Description:
A couple's tranquil life abroad is irrevocably transformed by the arrival of their son's widow and children, in the latest from Somalia's most celebrated novelist. For decades, Gacalo and Mugdi have lived in Oslo, where they've led a peaceful, largely assimilated life and raised two children. Their beloved son, Dhaqaneh, however, is driven by feelings of alienation to jihadism in Somalia, where he kills himself in a suicide attack. The couple reluctantly offers a haven to his family. But on arrival in Oslo, their daughter-in-law cloaks herself even more deeply in religion, while her children h... continue
20.
The Caged Virgin : An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam by Ayaan Hirsi Ali EN
Description:
A world-renowned activist and feminist pulls no punches in her efforts to reform Islam in this international bestseller, available for the first time in English.