Secrets Paperback – December 1, 1999

The novel, by a world-reknowned African novelist, is a mixture of in-your-face village realities and what seemed to me to be gratuitous magical realism. The final section is about the power of a woman, but it is so horrifying as to be misogynist.

My favorite author is nuruddin farah. His stories come to life and are effortlessly fascinating.I would purchase any book from this author.

It's Somalia---Mogadishu and environs---back when the country was about to descend into clan warfare and central government would disappear. The country's premier author has written this novel about a time of troubles. But you, the reader, are making your way through a thick jungle with heavily-scented flowers, buzzing insects, and the cries of hidden creatures that you hear but never see. It's all exotic and fascinating in a sweaty way, but why are you cutting such a path ? Where are you heading ? Personally, this reviewer lost his ambition to reach the end and despaired of even finding an open space where he could catch his breath and take stock of some direction. Those who love pure, lush verbiage, stacks of proverbs and unusual images will disagree with my take on SECRETS, but in my view, you must be a very determined reader to reach the end. I admired his "Sardines", written over thirty years ago and so was most willing to try this one, but I was disappointed. The writing is skillful; shifting voices, building up some tension (extremely slowly), extensive use of magical realism. 'Nuoro'--a quality which enables plants, animals and humans to divine who wishes them harm and who is benign. 'Nuoro' enables you to know when to stay and when to run. I think 'nuoro' helped me to stop reading, though the book did not harm me of course. 'Nabsi' is a quality that leads to human stability, an equilibrium of sorts. I moved in that direction by reading something else. Nuruddin Farah has talent, but I think it went overboard in this novel. That's it.

Set against a background of national collapse - the descent of Somalia into complete misrule as a dictatorship falls in the face of tribal warfare - the story of this novel follows the members of a small family that is also in conflict with itself. The central character, Kalaman, is a middle-aged man with a service industry job in the capital city, Mogadishu. When a childhood friend, now living in America, shows up mysteriously, her arrival sets in motion a gradual unraveling of long-held, fiercely guarded family secrets.Readers should be prepared for a multi-layered narrative, which moves at a glacial pace through long dialogues and monologues, analyzing a complexity of clues to the mystery at its heart. Meanwhile, there are motifs of birds, moments of magical realism, fits of melodrama, and a running gloss of folk tales, epigrams, and portentous dreams. Points of view shift among characters, and we realize that while all of this is going on, a culture with its beginnings in a pre-Islamic world is now coming to its end. This is a sophisticated novel for sophisticated readers, its contents meant to tease the intellect as well as the more prurient imagination.

I learned about author Nuruddin Farah while researching contemporary African writers and was immediately intrigued by him. This novel won the 1998 Neudstadt International Prize for Literature which has also been awarded to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, and this year to David Malouf. Secrets is well-deserving of this prize for a multitude of reasons.Not many people have read African authors, especially contemporary African authors, and this is a shame. Nuruddin Farah's work is a perfect representation and a very strong introduction to the obscure African literary canon. This is a bold and challanging work--one that will teach readers an awful lot about Somalian life and engage them in a brilliant story, as well.The story is set in Mogadiscio, Somalia during the horrific civil war, but readers should not let the setting frighten them away. One need not know anything about the conflict in order to enjoy the book. Farah has taken care of all of the details readers require. The plot involves the protagonist Kalaman's experiences upon receiving a visit from a childhood friend Sholoongo who wishes to bear his child. Her mysterious appearance causes Kalaman to confront his past's secrets and discover his own true identity.Farah's writing almost outshines his own story with its jewel-like descriptions and sensuous, organic details. His poetic and magical writing is engrossing as are his curious characters who are unlike any I have met in other novels. This is a novel that will transport the reader to a particular time and place in Africa and fill it with spellbinding details that are both very real and very magical. Animals have totemic significance and secrets, as the title suggests, are the focus of many, many mysteries in the book. In fact, the word "secret" appears hundreds of times and is used in as many ways in this book. That, in itself, is amazing indeed.This is a multi-layered, and multi-faceted novel, and its subplots, magical realism, and variety of speakers make this a challenging book, but if you are intrigued with African or are looking for an extraordinary story written in a very unique style, this book will not disappoint you.