Knots [Hardcover]

Nuruddin Farah (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2007

A new novel from one of the world's great writers-an extraordinary work set in Mogadiscio, Somalia-that both breaks new ground and brings him back to his literary roots.

A strong, self-reliant woman who was born in Somalia but brought up in North America, Cambara returns to Mogadiscio to escape a failed marriage and an overweening mother. Her journey back to her native home is a desperate attempt to find herself on her own terms-however ironically, in a country where women are expected to wear veils. And she has given herself a mission to reclaim her family's home from the warlord who has taken it as his own.

Cambara finds emotional refuge and practical support with a group of Somali women activists working to broker peace in a country that has been savagely riven by its drug-addled, power-hungry men. Farah's novels have been famous for their unique African feminism since his debut, From a Crooked Rib (just reissued by Penguin); Knots represents his most powerful return to that legacy.

Knots also presents a penetrating portrayal of Somalia's capital city-a city that's changed from the city Westerners saw on CNN and in 'Black Hawk Down,' transformed into a state of violent anarchy and psychological disrepair that has never been more important to understand. An especially intimate portrait of Mogadiscio, it's informed by Farah's own recent efforts to reclaim his family's property there, as well as his experiences trying to negotiate peace among the city's warlords.

Now more than ever, Farah's deeply wise and worldly inside look at the Muslim world is valuable and necessary.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nuruddin Farah's native country, Somalia, is shown in all its war-ravaged sadness in his harrowing novel, Knots. Cambara is a young Somalian-born woman who has spent most of her life in Toronto. Through the carelessness of her husband and his mistress, Cambara's son has drowned there and she is devastated by her grief. On a sudden impulse, she decides to go to Mogadiscio (Mogadishu) to properly grieve for her son and to try to wrest her family property from the warlords who seized it. Her journey is frightening and what she finds when she gets there is appalling, but she perseveres and accomplishes much of what she sets out to do.

Along the way she is helped by many people, without whom her goals could never have been reached. Despite squalor, poverty, sexual depravity, petty meanness, and the constant threat of violence, Cambara and a small cadre of good people continue to make progress against daunting odds. Much of the activity centers around ousting the thugs in Cambara's house, making it habitable again and mounting a play there that will showcase the solidarity and civilizing influence women have, even in the direst circumstances imaginable. Cambara is an inspiring woman, filled with zeal to make her world a better place. The other women, and several men, who help her, are Somalis grieving for their once beautiful city, now a landscape of tumbled buildings, potholed streets, gunfire everywhere, and very little hope. Cambara and her friends try to renew that hope in people very near despair by showing them that cooperating against evil may sometimes prevail.

Despite Cambara's inspirational behavior, Farah has drawn her as a character difficult to like. She seems by turns a friend and a manipulative user. In one instance, as she describes it, "she sees nothing wrong in relying on Dajaal's bravery to do the dirty work as long as she does not have to witness or have firsthand knowledge of the perpetration of the violence." There are also problems with Farah's style, by turns arch and stilted and then, in the same sentence, slangy and idiomatic. It is off-putting to the reader, but the harrowing story does come through. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Somalia-born Farah's ninth novel (after Links, first in a trilogy of which this is the second book) tells the spellbinding story of Cambara, a Somalian émigré to Canada. Cambara is mourning her only son's drowning death—in the Toronto pool of her abusive lawyer husband's mistress. In the aftermath, Cambara resolves to leave her husband, journey to Somalia and wrest control of her parents' property from warlord squatters. Her journey is mesmerizing.Cambara's first stop in Mogadiscio (aka Mogadishu, where the novel opens) is the filthy home of her foul-smelling cousin Zaak, a narcotic-chewing churl to whom she was briefly married. Zaak brings her up-to-date on the devastation to Somali society wrought by civil war and warlord rule: murderous AK-47–wielding youths; collapsed, empty theaters whose props have been burned for firewood (Cambara has worked as an actress and a makeup artist); constant mortal danger, despair and boredom. Cambara soon decamps for the relative luxury of an upscale hotel managed by Kiin, an unflappable woman who links Cambara to the Woman for Peace network, an organization of strong-willed activists that facilitates her daring production of a "play for peace." Kiin's web of connections also includes battle-hardened bodyguard Dajaal, who mobilizes others to drive the warlord's troops out of Cambara's family residence, which she then reoccupies to rehearse her play. Farah's depiction of the riotous urban madness that is Mogadiscio, where youth militias roam the ravaged streets of a once-cosmopolitan city, is both relentless and remorseful. But there is hope, too, in how Farah writes about the everyday heroics of people attempting to lead normal lives in the midst of savagely abnormal times. Farah describes these events in a lilting, poetic prose that is hypnotic in its ability to trace both the contradictions and hesitations of his protagonist and the complexities of Somali life. Despite its heavy subject, joy suffuses the novel. There have been Nobel rumblings about Farah for some time: certainly his ability to create a heroine whose power and depth of personality almost overwhelms the book written to contain her recalls the Australian laureate Patrick White. Few readers who let Cambara into their lives will easily forget her. (Feb.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover; 1ST edition (February 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594489246
• ISBN-13: 978-1594489242
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,086,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #27 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African > East African

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars awkward and painful, August 30, 2007

By 

Carissa K. Dougherty (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Knots (Hardcover)

I had to force myself to finish this book; somehow I felt that if I made it through the entire thing, something about the plot, the characters, or the subject matter would help it redeem itself. I was sorely wrong. The plot is incredibly contrived, the author (a man) presumably has a very skewed idea of what a woman's thought process might be, and what could have been a very interesting social commentary about civil war-torn Somalia fell short into platitudes and generalities. But the worst thing, by far, about Knots was the writing style. I felt like it had actually been translated into English from another language -- which is not a bad thing in itself -- but had then been scoured by someone looking to replace every other word with something from a thesaurus. The author mixed colloquial language and cliches with what he probably thought was very serious, "literary" passages -- extremely off-putting and jarring to read. The point of view of the book was also extremely distracting... second person omniscient? I felt like the whole story could have been more believable (and more of the horribly contorted and strained language contextualized) if the story had been told in the first person.

In short, this is an awkward and painful book to read; the prose made me cringe at least once every 5 pages. Yikes!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Much potential - not realized, July 29, 2007

By 

KAM "Reader" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knots (Hardcover)

I really wanted to like this book, especially since I had recommended it to my book club. But I'm afraid there is very little to recommend it. I appreciate that Mr. Farah is an important voice for Somalia - a country that has apparently completely devolved into anarchy - but this novel does very little to illuminate the causes or potential cures for what ails that desparate place. I found the characters to be two-dimensional and undeveloped, the voice and point-of-view to be muddled, and the English to be juvenile (I understand that English is not the author's first language - so the editor is to be faulted here). The story-line reads like a soap opera -- amazing coincidences save the main character at every turn. And for me, the greatest fault is that this is not really a novel at all. A novel tells a story through which we can learn about ourselves and others but here we are simply told what the main character is thinking or doing - rather having the action and context reveal possible motives. And even this expository style is inconsistent with abrupt shifts that have no grounding in what has gone before. There are so many potential and valuable themes here that are just never realized: the role of women in humanizing and civilizing a society, the value of the arts in redeeming otherwise de-humanized individuals, how violence begets violence and how to break that cycle, and so on. I finished the book because of my sense of loyalty to the Book Club but I'm afraid it is not really worth the time it takes to plod through it.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Farah must have had amnesia, July 30, 2007

By 

LHaim - See all my reviews

This review is from: Knots (Hardcover)

"Knots" has tremendous potential and could have been a beautiful story of a grieving mother, main character Cambara, who travels to her war-torn homeland, Somalia, to find herself and create a new life after much tragedy. Instead of developing Cambara's personality and relationships, Farah tries to squeeze too many people and events into a book that has no sense of time. One cannot tell if the events of the book happen within a span of one day or one year. Cambara has high aspirations (such as reclaiming her family's property from a warlord) that end up being easy and quick and that seem to take only a few minutes to accomplish, though this is very unrealistic and difficult to believe. Furthermore, Farah's writing is inconsistent. In one sentence a character has one sentiment or reaction and in the following sentence, there is a completely contradictory description. Thus much of the book was very confusing.

Farah's writing is full of unpleasant typos and poorly built sentences, as well as long run-ons and complicated vocabulary. The attempt to write eloquently is forced and unnatural.
The book started out well and was very interesting, but the downhill slope was steep and quick. Less than 100 pages into the book it was already convoluted and messy. It was clear that Farah was rushing and pushing characters and events, leaving them superficial and unrealistic.
It was very disappointing to me that a book that started out fairly well could have taken such a sharp turn. I haven't read any of Farah's other books but I hope that they are much better than "Knots."