Links - Nuruddin Farah

Jeebleh is returning to Mogadishu from New York for the first time in twenty years. It is not a nostalgia trip for him - Jeeblah's last residence here was a jail cell. And who could feel nostalgic for a city like this? The U.S. troops have recently 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. Jeebleh is returning to visit his mother's grave and to settle her outstanding accounts - but more urgently, the youngest member of his oldest friend's family has been abducted. Though they have not seen each other in two decades, Jeebleh knows from their childhood that his friend - a virtual brother, who remained in Somalia when Jeebleh left - will need Jeebleh to step in. Jeebleh is determined to cut through the swirling violence and corruption to rescue the child - and, perhaps, a piece of his own identity. Gripping, provocative, and revelatory, Links is the finest work yet from Farah, a novel that will secure his place in the international literary firmament and stand as a classic of modern world literature.