Books from Somalia
24 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:
Returning to Mogadishu, Somalia, from New York after a twenty-year exile, Jeebleh finds a troubled and devastated city ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by violent gangs of thugs, as he works to settle his late mother's outstanding accounts and aids an old friend whose youngest child has been abducted. Reprint.
16.
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.
17.
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
18.
Teaching My Mother how to Give Birth by Warsan Shire EN
Description:
"Arts Council England"--Page facing title page.
19.
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed EN
Description:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2022 'Chilling and utterly compelling, The Fortune Men shines an essential light on a much-neglected period of our national life' Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all e... continue
20.
The Last Nomad: Coming of Age in the Somali Desert by Shugri Said Salh EN
Description:
A remarkable and inspiring true story that "stuns with raw beauty" about one woman's resilience, her courageous journey to America, and her family's lost way of life. Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, ... continue