Links [Paperback]

Nuruddin Farah (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 29, 2005

Gripping, provocative, and revelatory, Links is a novel that will stand as a classic of modern world literature. Jeebleh is returning to Mogadiscio, Somalia, for the first time in twenty years. But this is not a nostalgia trip—his last residence there was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? U.S. troops have come and gone, and the decimated city is ruled by clan warlords and patrolled by qaat-chewing gangs who shoot civilians to relieve their adolescent boredom. Diverted in his pilgrimage to visit his mother’s grave, Jeebleh is asked to investigate the abduction of the young daughter of one of his closest friend’s family. But he learns quickly that any act in this city, particularly an act of justice, is much more complicated than he might have imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this stunning, timely novel from the internationally acclaimed Somalian writer Farah (From a Crooked Rib, etc.), Jeebleh, a middle-aged Somalian, leaves his family in New York to return for the first time in 20 years to his birthplace, civil war–torn Mogadishu. Having been a political prisoner before leaving the country, he's not anxious to go back, but feels responsibility for his family (he must settle his late mother's accounts, and make peace with her spirit) and for his oldest friend, Bile, whose niece, Raasta, and her playmate have been kidnapped. Bile's murderous, hedonistic stepbrother, Caloosha—who'd had Jeebleh imprisoned, two decades earlier—is now one of the city's notorious clan warlords and likely involved in the kidnapping. Jeebleh is horrified to see a city familiar yet terribly changed, where he is surrounded by gun-toting, qaat-chewing teenagers with hair-trigger tempers, family elders offended by his refusal to give them money to buy arms, and an associate of Caloosha's who collects dead bodies for reburial. Jeebleh fulfills his duties and reawakens his connections with his clan only when he sets his ideals aside, as he makes his way through the country's political and social labyrinths. Farah skillfully delineates the emotional transformations that take place in Jeebleh as he becomes accustomed to his changed homeland, a corrupt society where powerless citizens act on a moment-to-moment basis, whether for good or for ill, in order to survive, and where—as both Jeebleh and the reader discover—nothing is as simple as it first appears. The publication of this beautifully written book should be one of the year's literary events.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The New Yorker

This Somali novelist, who won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998, lives in exile in South Africa but, in his fiction, regularly returns to probe the "Dantean complexity" of his homeland. In his ninth novel, an exiled Somali dissident named Jeebleh goes back to Mogadishu after more than twenty years to search for his mother's grave and to settle old scores in the noxious hodgepodge of clan-based militias, warlords, and trigger-happy American soldiers. Jeebleh, now a university professor in New York with an American wife and two daughters, expects that his voyage will reinforce the great divide between his new life and the violent inhabitants of the "city of death." Instead, after the abduction of a friend's daughter, he discovers his own capacity for violence and his thirst for "justice, by any means possible."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (March 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143034847
• ISBN-13: 978-0143034841
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > African > East African

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Shifting Terrain of a Civil War, April 15, 2004

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Links (Hardcover)

In LINKS, a novel set in Somalia after the U.S. "peacekeeping" invasion, Nuruddin Farah has created a powerful psychological landscape of a people torn by civil war. Jeebleh arrives via airplane in Mogadiscio and at once witnesses the senseless murder of a ten year old German boy. When he learns that the teenagers who shot the boy kill for sport, he realizes his beloved country has sunk further than he had imagined. This Somalia is not a land of logic, not one of law and order. Yet, Jeebleh, once a political prisoner, has returned to his homeland for reasons which aren't readily apparent and which put his life in danger. His childhood friends, half-brothers who were raised by Jeebleh's mother as her own sons, oppose each other, thus bringing the precarious nature of this civil war deep into Jeebleh's personal life. Bile is Jeebleh's dear friend, a pacifist, medical doctor, and idealist who runs a refuge for those displaced by the war; Bile has suffered greatly during a lengthy imprisonment and still bears the scars. Caloosha, Bile's older half brother, is a war lord, torturer, and former captor of both Jeebleh and Bile. Caloosha is now suspected of being behind the kidnapping of Bile's charmed and beloved niece Raasta and her playmate. Raasta, who is seen as a miracle child and peacemaker, has become a symbol of hope for many, and her recovery has implications not only for those who love her but for Somalia as a whole.

In Farah's Somalia, no one can be trusted. Suspicions run so deep that an enemy can be a temporary savior and a friend can endanger one's life. It is a land scarred by gunshot and desperate poverty. Despite its harrowing decline, Farah's deep affection for his homeland radiates in his descriptions. His sorrow for what has happened resonates in every word. As Jeebleh makes his way through the maze of what's left, we are shown the many sides of modern Somalia and the repercussions of its division.

This spectacular novel, despite its emotional force, does have its weaknesses, though they are minor compared to the rewards. Farah's detailed description of Jeebleh's dreams, which alternate between the cryptic and the heavy-handed, add little to the real-life nightmare before him. And the writing (English is not Farah's native language) is occasionally awkward and peppered with similes such as "Bile's features had roughened at the edges, like frozen butter exposed to sudden heat" and "the omelette, which was as cold as a morgue." In these instances, Farah seems to be working too hard to impress - and failing at it - when his honest, direct style does so much more to win over the reader. This straightforward storytelling, used to describe a world that is everything but straightforward, brilliantly evokes the frightening chaos.

LINKS is an important literary achievement that deserves to be widely read. Farah's honesty and keen eye have brought a little-understood country and its culture into sharp focus. Unlike the characters he portrays, Farah can be trusted, for his guidance through the labyrinth of a destroyed Somalia is both authoritative and loving.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "We should have the vulture as our national symbol.", April 2, 2004

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Links (Hardcover)

Returning to Somalia twenty years after he was imprisoned and then sent into exile, Jeebleh arrives at a remote Mogadiscio airport now under the control of a major warlord. He has arrived from his adopted home in America to help his cousin Bile, affiliated with a warlord in the south of the city, find and rescue his kidnapped daughter and a friend. Because he belongs to the same clan as the warlord in the north, Jeebleh may be in a particularly good position to help if the child has been taken by a rival. The political situation is so tangled, however, that at times no one really knows who is allied with whom. "Here," someone says, "we don't think of 'friends' anymore. We rely on our clansmen...sharing ancestral blood."

It is not accidental that Jeebleh has received his doctorate for his book on Dante's Inferno, the symbolic parallel for the existentialist nightmare we see in Somalia. "We are at best good badmen or bad badmen," a Somali tells him as he tries to navigate the minefield of loyalties in Mogadiscio and stay alive. As Jeebleh tries to figure out whether his cousin Bile is one of the "good badmen" or "bad badmen" and whether Bile's half-brother in the north is involved in the kidnapping, we learn about his family background, Somali culture and history, and the mysterious associates of various warlords who want to "help" Jeebleh. The novel is filled with high tension as various characters, including Jeebleh, are pulled in different directions by circumstances over which they have no control. His enigmatic dreams and nightmares are much like the reality of life in Mogadiscio, where the crows and vultures are now tame because they are so well fed by the violence.

Author Farah's own background as an exiled Somali makes this novel particularly vivid, and the cultural conflicts and the pressures placed on Jeebleh's family loyalties ring with truth. As he represses his American values and makes some major decisions as a Somali, Jeebleh becomes part of the story of Somalia, "I've taken sides and made choices that may put my life in danger." Stressing that it is "only when there is harmony within the smaller unit," i.e., the family, that "the larger community finds comfort in the idea of the nation," Farah creates a taut novel in which the tensions within the family are a microcosm of the tensions within the country. Realistic in its descriptions and allegorical in its implications, Farah's novel is a breathtaking and sophisticated study of violence and betrayal certain to receive international recognition. Mary Whipple

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journey into a Dantean Hell ., June 1, 2004

By 

"arbgeek" (Colt's Neck, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Links (Hardcover)

This was a provocative ,inspiring read . Farah takes us to a place that exists in the present but is also surreal . It is a story of redemption and self -exploration ,written in a true voice .
I thouroughly enjoyed the intimacy of Farahs writing . The characters were real and represented both good and evil . Sometimes within the same persona ! Nuruddin Farah has taken us to a place that we could never fully appreciate without his flourishing prose.
This novel should be read by anyone who wishes to explore the inner recesses of the Somalian culture and the pathos that exists during any rebellion .