Is it possible that a single woman, even with the assistance of well-placed collaborators, can overcome the latent violence, disorder, tribalism, and corruption, of a city destroyed by civil war. This is the ambition of Cambara, a Somali ex-patriot, who has returned to Mogadiscio. She wants to reclaim her family property from a minor warlord, plus she wants to stage a play based on a folk tale. Overall she wants to contribute to building a new peace in war-torn Somalia. For this to happen everything must fall into place without a hitch, and so it does. The warlord is distracted by battle in other parts of the country. She finds allies who can guide her and help her with the production of her play. She seems to be immune to any of the violence which surrounds her island of calm and peace. It seems to good to be true, but this is the way Farrah presents his story. Conflict is all in anticipation and all prevented or avoided.
What saves this novel, indeed what lifts the story onto a plain at the highest level, is Farrah's restrained style of storytelling. He seems to have a grasp of what it would be like to encounter a failed state such as Somalia, a failed city such as Mogadiscio, and he draws us into it with patience and subtlety. We live with Cambara the frustration of stepping into a world where she is forced to wear a "body-tent" just to move safely about the streets. We watch the way that child soldiers casually accept the dangers of this environment. Farrah convinces us that this is a place where kindness has the potential to overcome all manner of adversity. ( )

Meh. I just could not get into this book. The characters neither acted nor sounded like real people. They all talked the same way and all made long speeches with big words -- even the character Gacal, who I think was only about ten years old. Cambara, the protagonist, goes to Somalia to escape a horrible marriage, grieve her dead son and reclaim her family's property which has been taken by a warlord. She shows up and right away half of Mogadishu comes to her saying, "We will help you! We will do anything you want, at risk of our lives, and you won't have to pay us! In fact, we'll even foot your bills! You can do whatever you want, no matter how strange it seems, and no one will ask you any questions! You can even go to your family property, get a plumber to make improvements, and take the warlord's pregnant girlfriend to the hospital, and she won't even inquire who the heck you are and what are you doing in her house! And then she will conveniently disappear from the story, never to be mentioned again!"

Cambara also pulls two random urchins off the street and basically adopts them -- which I can buy, given the recent loss of her son -- and miraculously they both turn out to be good, sweet, well-behaved boys who only needed a bath and a change of clothes to become normal children. This in spite of the fact that one of the boys is a child soldier and the other has been living on the streets of Mogadishu for two years.

I do not understand why Nuruddin Farah is so highly regarded as an author. Perhaps his other books are better than this? I'm not going to bother to find out. ( )

Cambara, a Somali woman raised in Canada, returns to Mogadiscio to forget the tragic death of her son, the infidelity of her husband and reclaim family property taken over by a minor warlord. Mogadiscio seems like the setting for "Mad Max", but without the cool clothes. I found the story a bit of a fable. Cambara manages to find a new son, new husband, evict a warlord, rescue a pregnant woman, reunite a lost child with his mother and produce a play without much trouble. She is strangely fearless and unconstrained by her upbringing as a Muslim woman. The life of Somali refugees depicted is, also, implausibly, without struggles. In Canada, she effortlessly becomes an acclaimed actress and produces her own music C.D. Other Somalis are lawyers. Most immigrants I know, despite their education, are limited by language and cultural and racial prejudices. Nuruddin Farah makes it all seem much too easy to be credible. ( )

Cambara - the heroine - is back in Somalia to nurse her broken heart and to retrieve her family home in the country. Her only child drowned in the swimming pool while her husband was in bed with his mistress. Through Cambara's eyes we see how Somalia has fallen. There are no educational facilities, various rag tag armies of young boys engage in regular skirmishes. How Cambara manages to retrieve her home, and find some balm for her broken heart is the main theme of the book.

In spite of the interesting theme I found it hard to like the book. The language is horribly stilted. Every action of the main protagonist is analyzed, rationalized and dissected even before it happens, literally killing any pace that the book might pick up. Then Cambara gets unexpected help almost every step of the way, making one wonder what her role, her growth in the book really is. ( )

Canadian citizen while somalia by birth travels from Toronto to Mogadiscio to claim from a minor warlord her family ancestery. She is an only child of well-off parents who take in a cousin to help her with academics as well as socialization... The layout of the book examines and highlites relationships between and among as well as cultural mores.....well written using similies and metaphors. ( )