Nadifa Mohamed with Cynthia Bond

Even though it is virtual, we are delighted to finally be able to present a reading/talk program with Nadifa Mohamed, a writer we’ve read and followed through her first novels, Black Mamba Boy and The Orchard of Lost Souls. Born in Hargeisa, Somaliland and then raised and educated in London, she has received the Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham Awards, and in 2013 was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists – a distinction which got her to Seattle as part of a group tour. She is virtually with us tonight for her compelling, Man Booker shortlist nominated novel, The Fortune Men (Knopf). Based on a true story, the narrative centers on the unjust conviction (overturned years later) and execution of an innocent Somali immigrant, Mahmood Mattan in Cardiff, Wales in 1952. There is more to this book than that.

“Equally informative and moving . . . The immediate allure of the novel is the vibrancy of Mohamed’s prose, her ability to capture the complicated culture of Cardiff and the sound of tortured optimism. . . . The horrific finale of The Fortune Men is never in doubt, but for more than 200 pages Mohamed still creates a sharp sense of suspense by pulling us right into Mahmood’s world as his life tilts and then crashes. . . . There’s a natural grandeur to her portrayal of this ordinary man caught in the city’s gears. Readers will hear echoes of Dostoevsky and Kafka in her re-creation of this nightmare. . . . With The Fortune Men, Mohamed has given us a clear vision of so many victims caught in the maw of racist legal systems.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post.

“Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men is a blues song cut straight from the heart. It tells about the unjust death of an innocent Black man caught up in a corrupt system. Nadifa’s masterful evocation of the full life of Mahmood Mattan, the last man executed in Cardiff for a crime he was exonerated for forty years later, is brought alive with subtle artistry and heartbreaking humanity. In one man’s life Mohamed captures the multitudes of homelands, dialects, hopes, and prayers of Somalis, Jews, Maltese and West Indians drawn in by the ships that filled Wales’ Tiger Bay in the 1950’s, all hoping for a future that eludes Mattan.”—Walter Mosley.