Somalia
Somalia
Nuruddin Farah
Arcade Publishing
(2007)

Set in Mogadiscio, Somalia, this novel brings the author back to his literary roots. He presents the story of a woman raised in North America who returns to her homeland in a desperate attempt to find herself and reclaim her family's home from the warlord who has taken it.
 
Annotation:
Since 1991, Somalia has existed in a state of near perpetual warfare. Into this chaos, Cambara, a Somalia-born actress living in Canada, returns to reclaim items from her family estate that a warlord in Mogadishu has stolen. Behind her in Canada lies another kind of trauma: her son drowned while her husband was sleeping with his mistress. In Mogadishu she is forced to live with her hateful cousin Zaak, and the Islamic fundamentalists make it unsafe for her leave the house without her body covered. Tangled in a world of pain, Cambara's attempts to find meaning, friends, and even love, seems impossible, but Nuruddin Farah, writing with a fierce optimism, shows Cambara gradually making sense out of madness--in this respect, KNOTS acts as a small bright light for hope in a blighted country.
(http://www.buy.com/prod/knots/q/loc/106/205098076.html)