Not surprisingly, Caloosha matured into a sadistic brute. Caloosha was so violently abused by Bile's father that, at the age of 9, the boy apparently killed the man with a poisoned arrow. Nevertheless, Jeebleh and Bile bonded like brothers. Jeebleh and Caloosha's fathers were from the same clan, while Bile's father was from a rival group. When they were boys, their mothers combined households to save expenses, meaning that their sons grew up as siblings.

The novel tells the intertwined histories of Jeebleh, his close friend Bile and Bile's violent half-brother, Caloosha. His latest effort confronts the effects of civil war, the conflict between his lead character's postmodern sensibility and ancient traditions, and the contrasting ties of friendship and family clan. Farah, winner of the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and often rumored to be on the short list for the Nobel, is the author of two trilogies that explore the fractured Somali identity. He has a kidnapped girl to rescue, a deceased mother's spirit to soothe and a violent score to settle with a tormentor who once had him imprisoned.īut for Nuruddin Farah, himself an exile from Somalia since the mid-1970s, narrative drive and plot twists are secondary to explorations of personal identity, character and the complex ways these are shaped by international events. In Links, the latest novel by one of Africa's most revered writers, a Somali exile named Jeebleh returns to his woeful nation for the first time in more than two decades.

Links by Nuruddin Farah