Secrets, by Nuruddin Farah (used)

Set against the backdrop of civil war in Somalia, Secrets is a stunning, revelatory novel by one of the major figures of modern African literature. Nuruddin Farah has earned the highest praise from the world's foremost writers and most respected literary reviews, and has been named the 1998 laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, "widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel" (New York Times). With Secrets, Farah takes his place in the international pantheon of contemporary literature.

Secrets is set in Mogadiscio in the week before the official outbreak of the civil war. Society is collapsing under the weight of its own perversities, and the city itself is rattling with machine-gun fire when the novel's main character, Kalaman, receives an unexpected house guest, his childhood crush returned from America to take him up on an old pledge. In this tempestuous political and social landscape, Farah turns loose his storytelling genius, which draws his readers through the rifts tearing across Somali society, deep into the culture and mind-set of his troubled country and continent.

The arrival of Kalaman's guest pulls him back into his past, back into a nest of stories and myths, of doubts and secrets - everything he thought he had escaped. Now, souls are bared and no memories sacred. Kalaman must watch his own coming-of-age story reveal itself as his family's multilayered tale of lost innocence. It is an exposition of a world that mixes the exotic with the surprisingly familiar. A world with much to teach about the effects of authoritarianism, about man’s relationship to the natural world, about family, sex, love. 

But more than an intimate tour, Secrets is an achingly good novel written in prose that teems with myth and metaphor, and is driven by a unique rhythm and lyricism. Farah chooses to write in English, and he imbues the language with a freshness and deep resonance emanating from his rich and diverse linguistic and cultural heritage. In Secrets his talents are on their fullest display, and the novel will stand as one of the great works of modern African literature.