Secrets

Rating:
Summary: A few of the world greatest writers on Nuruddin Farah
Review: "Nuruddin Farah is one of the finest contemporary African novelists." -SALMAN RUSHDIE

"With Secrets, Nuruddin Farah solidifies his reputation as one of the world's great writers. He has the painter's perspective, and a knowledge of the natural world which he uses effectively in this novel about the beauty and the woes of modern Africa." -ISHMAEL REED

"Nuruddin Farah is one of the real interpreters of experience on our troubled continent. His insight goes deep, beyond events, into the sorrows and joys, the frustrations and achievements of our lives. His prose finds the poetry that is there." -NADINE GORDIMER

"Nuruddin Farah takes us deep into territory he has charted and mapped and made uniquely his ownŠHe excels in giving voice to tragedy in remote places of the world that speak directly and familiarly to our own hearts." -CHINUA ACHEBE

"Nuruddin Farah is a major writer, one of Africa's best." -ROBERT COOVER

Rating:
Summary: Voice Literary Supplement, Greg Tate, June 1998:
Review: "Secrets" is a narrative snake...whipping and writhing in concentric circles that split off and reform in ways which eventually provide all of Farah's major characters with first person psychic renderings and reckonings. His luminous syntax transforms even the most oblique passages into sensual experiences...Farah's "Secrets" and Toni Morrison's "Paradise" make for compelling transatlantic companion pieces by distraught genius composers. (Greg Tate, Village Voice Literary Supplement, June 1998)

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the considerable effort
Review: At the outset of this review, I have to note that I didn't finish it; got through 243 of the 298 pages. Imagine putting down a mystery, not discovering The Secret when you're that close? A new experience for me. But, I just wasn't interested enough, identified with the characters sufficiently to care about the revelation of The long-drawn-out Secret. Maybe I couldn't get with the foreign, Somalian idiom, despite its being delivered in erudite English prose, replete with metaphor and allegory that I found wearying after the initial challenge. The story is set within the Somalian internal, inter-tribal conflict but, despite references to it, I couldn't get past the worries and carrying-ons of the characters that, although undoubtedly of essential importance for them, left me only wanting to get to the ending to learn The Secret. Finally, I got brave enough to admit that I really didn't care enough to expend the time and energy.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the considerable effort
Review: At the outset of this review, I have to note that I didn't finish it; got through 243 of the 298 pages. Imagine putting down a mystery, not discovering The Secret when you're that close? A new experience for me. But, I just wasn't interested enough, identified with the characters sufficiently to care about the revelation of The long-drawn-out Secret. Maybe I couldn't get with the foreign, Somalian idiom, despite its being delivered in erudite English prose, replete with metaphor and allegory that I found wearying after the initial challenge. The story is set within the Somalian internal, inter-tribal conflict but, despite references to it, I couldn't get past the worries and carrying-ons of the characters that, although undoubtedly of essential importance for them, left me only wanting to get to the ending to learn The Secret. Finally, I got brave enough to admit that I really didn't care enough to expend the time and energy.

Rating:
Summary: Birthed in Blood
Review: Before its independence in 1960, Somalia was the bloody battleground for power between the fading British and Italian empires; in the late 70s it became a staging ground for the cold war maneuvering between the US and the USSR. In 1991, after Somalia's genocidal dictator was overthrown, equally bloodthirsty warlords began vying for control and, tragically, Somalia collapsed into anarchy. Ironically, this racially, ethnically, religiously and linguistically homogeneous people are now controlled by clans and subclans. Unless and until the country confronts its past, Somalians will render Somalia into nothingness.

Nuruddin Farah places responsibility for Somalia's plight on Somalian's themselves: "If you take the Somali nation as a family, the betrayal is no longer that of colonialism, it is no longer from outside, but from within. And the cure must also be found from within."

Farah strives to keep his homeland alive through his writing and his most recent trilogy, culminating in Secrets, is polemic disguised as obituary disguised as parable disguised as local drama.

In Secrets, one family serves as a metaphor for Somalia, itself; a family whose own checkered past and its members failure to understand one another tears apart and destroys their lives.

Kalaman, the protagonist of Secrets, has always wondered about the secrets surrounding his origins, beginning with his own name. For the name, Kalaman, came from the cry of a bird heard at his birth and, as such, is devoid of any sense of history or family heritage. Family heritage, though, is essential to Kalaman, for he was a child who had always been "interested in the origins of things, how rivers came into being and why they ran and where."

As a result of the secrets surrounding both Kalaman and his family, his grandfather, Nonno, cannot die, his mother suffers from violent nightmares and Kalaman's world is filled with an ever-increasing emptiness.

On the eve of Somalia's collapse into anarchy, Kalaman's sensual and demanding childhood sweetheart, Sholoongo, appears in his home and announces her intentions of bearing his child. Her presence incurs the wrath of Kalaman's mother and pulls Kalaman back into a despair-filled past where he disassembles the myth that represents his family and unleashes all of its long-held secrets.

Secrets displays Farah's superb talents to the fullest. The plot is rich, the language sophisticated and exotic without being overwrought. Displaying elements of magic realism, totemic animals drift through scenery, dreams are symbolic, folktales, prophetic. When Kalaman asks Nonno about Sholoongo's own secrets, Nonno gives him the enigmatic reply: "A man shuts himself away in a dark room, raises his index finger, pointing at the ceiling. Reemerging, he challenges the community members to tell him what he did in the dark room. Another man describes accurately what he did in the dark room when alone."

Conceived in violence rather than in love, and ignorant of his own history, Kalaman is a metaphor for Somalia, itself. Sholoongo, who was born a "duugan," a baby to be taken to the desert and buried, represents Somalia's festering, unspoken history and like that history she "lived to haunt the villagers conscience." Sholoongo is the book's catalyst and her arrival brings back an ugly past for each of Farah's characters, yet, once confronted and embraced, this ugliness is transformed.

Nonno tells Kalaman his "undealt-with troubles began the instant he introduced a decisive element of blame-the-other syndrome into his guilt ridden sorrow." Nonno then begins to associate Kalaman even more closely with Somalia: "There are moments in a person's or a nation's life when collapses can be avoided, even if at first they seem inevitable...Kalaman could have brought an end to this rigamarole sooner, if he had been true to his own instincts, if he had been forthrightly frank with Sholoongo herself: the Somali collectivity could have reversed the coming decline. He had no right to blame his parents or Nonno or others for his own failure...Give people a chance to speak their pieces, and many will display their personal and collective hurts: they all see themselves as ill-used by the dictatorship. Press them further into the corner, ask them for their contributions to the struggle against one-man tyranny, and they fall silent, many unable to deny being accomplices in the rain."

Secrets is a magical story, evocative of the beauty and tragedy that is Africa today. Its politics are metaphorical and never intrusive, for Farah is not a politician but a storyteller extraordinaire.

His life-affirming message, however, to the family that is Somalia is clear: Heal your wounds, Sister. Shout your secrets from the rooftops as loud as you can.

Rating:
Summary: READ ALL THE REVIEWS
Review: Click on the Read All the Reviews button. It's worth it. If you like great writing you'll be convinced that you should read all of this guy's books. I've read two now, this one and Gifts, and I'm about to go on to Maps and then keep on reading everything. He's that good, one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read, along with Haruki Murakami, John Edgar Wideman, and Denis Johnson.

Rating:
Summary: Birthed in Blood
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Example of an African Novel
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Wow. I love this book.
Review: I've just posted rave reviews of Maps and Gifts, the other books in the Blood in the Sun trilogy, but Secrets is I think the best--the deeply textured, invigorating climax to a series of books that has literally changed the way I read literature. It's also probably the most controversial, but that shouldn't keep anyone away. These books should be required reading for living in our new Global Village, and they're already necessary for anyone who cares about reading future classics, about reading books that, if there is any literary justice, will forever change the way every writer from every country will write novels.

Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing. A book to read in one great gulp.
Review: I've read and enjoyed most of Farah's novels over the years - this is his finest so far. Kalaman's journey back into his family and his memories enthralled me. The writing is physical, earthy and always unexpected. I read the book one Sunday afternoon in a sitting. I couldn't find a place in the narrative where I wanted to pause, so just read and read. I'll be the first in line to buy his next book.