Nuruddin Farah was born in Baidoa, in 1945. His mother was a traditional storyteller and his father a merchant and interpreter for the British governor. Farah was brought up and educated in five languages: Somali, Amharic, Arabic, Italian and English. After his country won its independence and border disputes broke out with the neighbouring country, Farah went to Punjab University in Chandigarh, to study philosophy, sociology and literary theory.

Following the publication of an early short story in his mother tongue, Somali, he began writing in English while at university. His first novel, »From a Crooked Rib« (1970), about a young nomad girl who escapes an arranged marriage to an older man, met with international acclaim. Farah went to Europe in 1974 and studied drama in London and Essex, not returning to his native country, where he was threatened with imprisonment. In fact, he was sentenced to death in absentia in the late seventies. For twenty-two years he lived in various countries in Europe, Africa and the U.S., giving lectures as a visiting professor in Italy, Britain, Germany, the U.S., Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Gambia and Sudan. In 1990 he received a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service and came to Berlin.

Farah is among the most significant modern African writers. His style is inspired by the power of images, metaphors and symbols from nature with which he was familiar due to Somalia’s oral tradition, taking them from myths, proverbs, nomadic lore, Sufi mysticism and magical relics from pre-modern Africa. Frequent themes in his work include the condition of women in post-colonial Somalia in the context of loss of national identity, the result of colonisation and neo-colonialism in Farah’s account. His second trilogy, »Blood in the Sun« (1986/1993/1998) – translated, as is most of his work, into German – describes the search for social, personal, family and sexual identity amid violence and dictatorship. Two volumes – »Links« (2004) and »Knots« (2007) – of his latest trilogy set in Somalia torn apart by civil war and eaten away by corruption have been published. The third volume is in progress.

Farah’s novels and plays for theatre and radio have been translated into over twenty languages; in Somalia his work is circulated as underground literature. The author has been honoured with numerous prizes from all over the world, including the International Neustadt Literary Prize in 1998. In 2001 he received the Fonlon-Nichols Award from the African Literature Association for his œuvre. In the summer semester of 2007 Farah held the Samuel Fischer guest professorship at the Free University of Berlin. The author lives in Cape Town.

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