Secrets » (Reissue)

Secrets is set in Mogadiscio in the week before the official outbreak of the civil war. Society is collapsing under the weight of its own perversities, and the city itself is rattling with machine gun fire when the novel's main character, Kalaman, receives an unexpected house guest, his childhood crush returned from America to take him up on an old pledge. In this tempestuous political and social landscape, Farah turns loose his storytelling genius, which draws his readers through the rifts tearing across Somali society, deep into the culture and mind set of his troubled country and continent. The arrival of Kalaman's guest pulls him back into his past, back into a nest of stories and myths, of doubts and secrets - everything he thought he had escaped. Now, souls are bared and no memories sacred. Kalaman must watch his own coming of age story reveal itself as his family's multilayered tale of lost innocence. It is an exposition of a world that, for American readers, mixes the exotic with the surprisingly familiar. A world with much to teach about the effects of authoritarianism, about man's relationship to the natural world, about family, sex, and love.

Kadija Sesay

There is no doubt that Farah is master over his use of language. But he plays and lays it out in such a way he uses each word to explain every nuance and meaning possible. . . . While the book's first half may be most enjoyed by the author's most dedicated fans and literary image hunters willing to reach the second, Farah's Secrets does manage to evolve into as a fascinating story. -- Quarterly Black Review