A couple's tranquil life abroad is irrevocably transformed by the arrival of their son's widow and children, in the latest from Somalia's most celebrated novelist.
... affecting ... The suspense that propels North of Dawn stems from this worry: Will the children be OK? ... The dialogue has a tendency toward awkward exposition, yet the patient clarity of Farah’s storytelling makes the cultures he depicts, and the history he outlines, easily comprehensible. His characters are beautifully drawn, their psychology complex. The pious Saafi, in particular, is fascinating to watch...
... we might expect high drama, but here, instead, is a nuanced, quietly devastating family soap opera ... There is indeed a weary tone to this book, relayed mainly through Mugdi: the exhausted, chronic grief of one who has witnessed his country implode like a dark star ... Farah is a deeply sophisticated writer, his prose almost aromatic, like rich, sweet Somali tea. The story exists in the ether between the words; nothing will be simplified or explained, and quiet dread mounts, page after page, though little plot propels it.
North of Dawn is bracingly honest about the difficulties of assimilation, the way hospitality curdles into condescension and gratitude sours into resentment ... [The idea that Muslim radicalism is one side of the coin of intolerance that’s gaining currency in liberal democracies] is such a timely, necessary argument, but I wish it were expressed more gracefully in these pages. North of Dawn suffers from a ramshackle quality one might expect from an exciting but not quite finished draft. There are strange gaps in the plot, and the prose sometimes slips into antique cliches ... And Farah’s characters sometimes speak in weirdly artificial ways ... The story Farah shows us through these characters’ derailed lives is more illuminating than anything they can explain to us.
