Nuruddin Farah was born in Somalia in 1945.

In exile for more than 25 years, Farah’s main work is divided into two trilogies. The first focuses on the family unit as a safe refuge and as the antithesis to the threats of the dictatorship. The second trilogy, consisting of Maps, Gifts, and Secrets, which largely came into being during the turmoil of the Somali civil war, takes the orphan as the central metaphor for the increasing distance to his country of origin. In 1998, he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.