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Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Farah's landmark Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy is comprised by the novels Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. In this volume, the second of the three, a woman loses her job as editor of the national newspaper and then finds her efforts to instill her daughter with a sense of dignity and independence threatened by an oppressive government and the traditions of conservative Islam.
Sardines brilliantly combines a social commentary on life under a dictatorship with a compassionate exploration of African feminist issues.
Farah's landmark Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy is comprised by the novels Sweet and Sour Milk, Sardines, and Close Sesame. In this volume, the second of the three, a woman loses her job as editor of the national newspaper and then finds her efforts to instill her daughter with a sense of dignity and independence threatened by an oppressive government and the traditions of conservative Islam.
Sardines brilliantly combines a social commentary on life under a dictatorship with a compassionate exploration of African feminist issues.
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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About the author
Nuruddin Farah
31 books337 followersNuruddin Farah (Somali: Nuuradiin Faarax, Arabic: نور الدين فرح) is a prominent Somali novelist. Farah has garnered acclaim as one of the greatest contemporary writers in the world, his prose having earned him accolades including the Premio Cavour in Italy, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Sweden, the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, and in 1998, the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In the same year, the French edition of his novel Gifts won the St Malo Literature Festival's prize. In addition, Farah is a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 19, 2022
This is the second Nuruddin Farah novel I've read. I've owned a copy of this book since the mid-1990's I know. It has taken me decades to come to read this second part of the Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship Trilogy. I have read the first part, Sweet and Sour Milk, twice. It's one of my favorite pieces of African literature. Picking up this book after approximately fourteen years after my last reading of Sweet and Sour Milk proved challenging. I have vague remembrances of the latter (which means I have to read it again before closing the trilogy). Like Sweet and Sour Milk, this text is set during the late 1970s in Somalia about a decade into The General's rule, which ushered into a unique form of Socialism within an Islamic societal framework.
Farah is an excellent writer. His words are heavy with meaning; he is expertly philosophical. His stories carry suspense. They are also full of complexity that keeps the readers on his or her toes. You have to be nimble to keep up with Farah in this novel. The main characters are fairly well defined, and they are connected to the main characters of Sweet and Sour Milk. This, in no way, is a sequel. Farah introduces us to the survivors of the counter-revolutionaries found in Sweet and Sour Milk. Both texts can stand on their own. The common thread that runs through both texts is the fascist government in Somalia.
This text is written from the perspective of women in Somalia. Women are the thinkers, the plotters, and the movers in this novel. And they have sharp disagreements with one another. They are representative of how divided ideologically the society was during that time. The book is full of so many criticisms of patriarchy (and matriarchy) that the reader should keep notes. These criticisms are sharp and elegant like an ancient Samurai sword. One more thing: Farah is intertextual mentioning loads of writers (the main characters are well-read in revolutionary literature), but one text stands out as he mentions it numerous times, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Watch out for those intertextual references. Those references and two characters from the African Diaspora give the book a Pan-African flavor.
Farah is a writer who has kept governance in Africa, especially in his homeland of Somalia under tight scrutiny. A reader gains keen insight into post-independence politics from reading his works. I recommend his work.
Farah is an excellent writer. His words are heavy with meaning; he is expertly philosophical. His stories carry suspense. They are also full of complexity that keeps the readers on his or her toes. You have to be nimble to keep up with Farah in this novel. The main characters are fairly well defined, and they are connected to the main characters of Sweet and Sour Milk. This, in no way, is a sequel. Farah introduces us to the survivors of the counter-revolutionaries found in Sweet and Sour Milk. Both texts can stand on their own. The common thread that runs through both texts is the fascist government in Somalia.
This text is written from the perspective of women in Somalia. Women are the thinkers, the plotters, and the movers in this novel. And they have sharp disagreements with one another. They are representative of how divided ideologically the society was during that time. The book is full of so many criticisms of patriarchy (and matriarchy) that the reader should keep notes. These criticisms are sharp and elegant like an ancient Samurai sword. One more thing: Farah is intertextual mentioning loads of writers (the main characters are well-read in revolutionary literature), but one text stands out as he mentions it numerous times, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Watch out for those intertextual references. Those references and two characters from the African Diaspora give the book a Pan-African flavor.
Farah is a writer who has kept governance in Africa, especially in his homeland of Somalia under tight scrutiny. A reader gains keen insight into post-independence politics from reading his works. I recommend his work.
May 26, 2021
Sardines is about Farah’s opposition to the three forces that are dragging Somalia down. The oppressive regime of Siad Barre, the tribal -clan system and the outdated teachings from the Islamic law.
The story evolved around Medina-Samater relationship and Sagal’s swimming carrier/ being pregnant/ dealing with her mother.
Medina is a journalist, is wife of Samater, who is being appointed as minister. She is the mother of eight-year old daughter, Ubax. Medina is similar to the main characters of Farah other books, is well educated- she had a degree in literature. She is very well-read.
Medina was fired as journalist when in charge of the only newspaper in Mogadishu, she changed a presidential decree (p 217). They authorities forbade her from publishing her writings anywhere in Somalia.
Medina left her husband when he became a minister. She left hem because of Idil- his old fashioned and domineering mother. Idil wanted Ubax circumcised. Medina left because she wanted to write a book critical of the government, which would have been embarrassing for Samater. At the end of the novel we discover the real reasons for her decision to leave Samater.
Meanwhile Medina decided to translate world classics into Somali, in order to read them to Ubax. One of the books is the story all of you, in Achebe’s book things fall apart.
Sagal is Medina’s best friend. Sagal a first-class swimmer who had won several competitions. If she won the next one, she would be able to go to Budapest for an international competition. While there, she planned to ask asylum. If she did not win, she would rebel and be imprisoned. Sagal has had an affair with Wentworth George, a black Caribbean. Sagal lives with her mother, Ebla. The two have a difficult relationship, because of her mother’s relationship with Bile.
Other characters:
-Atta, an African-American woman.
-Nasser is Medina’s brother, has also returned from abroad to help out. He has a relationship with an actress who has fallen on hard times. Nasser ,Dulman, Cedar and Hindiya are in jail because of their opposition to the regime.
– Sandra, an Italian journalist, who work with the regime.
-Soyan was dood and Loyan is in exile.
The heart of the book is on page 247 revealing the reason why Medina left her husband.
I really enjoyed reading this book. For the good ideas and for the strong character of Medina.
The story evolved around Medina-Samater relationship and Sagal’s swimming carrier/ being pregnant/ dealing with her mother.
Medina is a journalist, is wife of Samater, who is being appointed as minister. She is the mother of eight-year old daughter, Ubax. Medina is similar to the main characters of Farah other books, is well educated- she had a degree in literature. She is very well-read.
Medina was fired as journalist when in charge of the only newspaper in Mogadishu, she changed a presidential decree (p 217). They authorities forbade her from publishing her writings anywhere in Somalia.
Medina left her husband when he became a minister. She left hem because of Idil- his old fashioned and domineering mother. Idil wanted Ubax circumcised. Medina left because she wanted to write a book critical of the government, which would have been embarrassing for Samater. At the end of the novel we discover the real reasons for her decision to leave Samater.
Meanwhile Medina decided to translate world classics into Somali, in order to read them to Ubax. One of the books is the story all of you, in Achebe’s book things fall apart.
Sagal is Medina’s best friend. Sagal a first-class swimmer who had won several competitions. If she won the next one, she would be able to go to Budapest for an international competition. While there, she planned to ask asylum. If she did not win, she would rebel and be imprisoned. Sagal has had an affair with Wentworth George, a black Caribbean. Sagal lives with her mother, Ebla. The two have a difficult relationship, because of her mother’s relationship with Bile.
Other characters:
-Atta, an African-American woman.
-Nasser is Medina’s brother, has also returned from abroad to help out. He has a relationship with an actress who has fallen on hard times. Nasser ,Dulman, Cedar and Hindiya are in jail because of their opposition to the regime.
– Sandra, an Italian journalist, who work with the regime.
-Soyan was dood and Loyan is in exile.
The heart of the book is on page 247 revealing the reason why Medina left her husband.
I really enjoyed reading this book. For the good ideas and for the strong character of Medina.
September 29, 2017
[#92 Somalia] This is the amazing story of a group of Somalian women, their struggles, their convictions, and their choices. There's not much of a plot, which means the pace may seem slow, but it's less about an adventure and more about ideas being discussed. Since it was written in the 80s, it might not be the most up-to-date novel ever, but the writing style is spectacular, especially coming from a country where oral tradition is strongly predominant.
April 14, 2015
Nuruddin Farah is a clever writer beyond doubt. Never falls into the trap of making an odious figure out of an dictator. Rather, he challenges the system, scrutinizes family, traditions, even family... - nothing falls short of his attention. A dictatorship as a fraternity (or sorority for that matter) of complices in crime... and the cost of standing aside... Besides, Farah is a great commander over metaphors: the myth of Prometheus, New Year fire, fire as a source of power and inequality - I am still digging it...
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February 27, 2008la dictature commence au sein de la famille elle-même:
fic-guided
August 20, 2020Female genital mutilation became a headline issue in Britain in the second decade of the twenty-first century. There were frequent stories (many extremely harrowing) and much fist-banging comment in newspapers; help websites were set up; campaigns were organised to suppress the hideous practice. The previously current neutral terms ‘clitoridectomy’ and ‘female circumcision’ were universally dropped, in favour of the wholly condemnatory ‘FGM’. But oddly, although since 1985 an estimated 3,000–4,000 procedures of wholly criminal ‘cutting’ have taken place every year among immigrant communities in the UK on girls as young as four (typically carried out with razor blades or scissors, without anaesthetic, by medically unqualified practitioners, mainly female), not a single court case has been brought. It is tolerance by legal paralysis – or self-inflicted blindness.
Somalian novels are rare birds in the English-speaking world. Farah is one of the few novelists from that country with an international profile. The ‘sardines’ of the title are a group of contemporary Mogadishu ‘priviligentsia’. What cramps their Westernised cosmopolitan style, like the tiny fish in the tiny tin, is the police state in which they live (tyrannised over by an unnamed ‘General’) and the tribal traditions of a recent feudal past. They are, however, sardines – not martyrs. The novel takes as its epigraph Ho Chi Minh’s ironic:
Being chained is a luxury.
The chained have somewhere to sleep
The unchained have not.
They get by, like the chorus in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, ‘living and half-living’.
The novel’s heroine, Medina, has thrown off the chains of marriage and deserted her husband, taking her eight-year-old daughter with her. Her abandoned spouse is a well-meaning, time-serving politician, feebly hoping to ‘humanise’ from within the regime he serves. She is a tough, westernised journalist. There are two reasons for her leaving the marriage – and all that goes with it. One reason is that she intends to write a book critical of the General (for the same reason, she has withdrawn her daughter from school, where she will only learn ninety-nine ways of praising the father of the revolution). The second reason is that she has resolved that she will not allow her daughter to be circumcised by another dictator, her mother-in-law:
If they mutilate you at eight or nine, they open you up with a rusty knife the night they marry you off; then you are cut open and re-stitched. Life for a circumcised woman is a series of deflowering pains, delivery pains and re-stitching pains. I want to spare my daughter these and many other pains. She will not be circumcised.
Nothing much happens in the novel beyond the tracing of various tensions and frustrations. It ends with a minor purge. The husband is disgraced, beaten up and reconciled with his wife. There are deportations and possibly executions to come. The General remains, remote and patriarchally irremovable. Circumcision, matriarchally irremovable, goes on, but perhaps Medina’s daughter will be spared. Perhaps. The novel leaves the outcome in the air.
Much has happened in Somalia since 1981, none of it good: it is one of the unhappier places in the world. But the practice of FGM remains a sanctioned and honoured institution. It is estimated that ninety-nine per cent of young girls in Somalia undergo it. Farah’s novel artfully defines the critical issues that the practice raises. It is practised almost exclusively by women on women. Historically FGM was put down by colonial powers – prohibition led by Christian missionaries who found it an abomination. In the struggles of colonially oppressed countries, notably Kenya, it was aggressively revived during the period of insurgency as an assertion of cultural independence. Kenya’s best-known – and defiantly post-colonial – novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, has taken up what many see as an ambiguous position on the practice. In short, it’s a fiendishly difficult issue. Farah’s novel diagnoses the difficulty with a great novelist’s sensitivity. Fiction is one of the few places where the complexities can be fully articulated.
Somalian novels are rare birds in the English-speaking world. Farah is one of the few novelists from that country with an international profile. The ‘sardines’ of the title are a group of contemporary Mogadishu ‘priviligentsia’. What cramps their Westernised cosmopolitan style, like the tiny fish in the tiny tin, is the police state in which they live (tyrannised over by an unnamed ‘General’) and the tribal traditions of a recent feudal past. They are, however, sardines – not martyrs. The novel takes as its epigraph Ho Chi Minh’s ironic:
Being chained is a luxury.
The chained have somewhere to sleep
The unchained have not.
They get by, like the chorus in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, ‘living and half-living’.
The novel’s heroine, Medina, has thrown off the chains of marriage and deserted her husband, taking her eight-year-old daughter with her. Her abandoned spouse is a well-meaning, time-serving politician, feebly hoping to ‘humanise’ from within the regime he serves. She is a tough, westernised journalist. There are two reasons for her leaving the marriage – and all that goes with it. One reason is that she intends to write a book critical of the General (for the same reason, she has withdrawn her daughter from school, where she will only learn ninety-nine ways of praising the father of the revolution). The second reason is that she has resolved that she will not allow her daughter to be circumcised by another dictator, her mother-in-law:
If they mutilate you at eight or nine, they open you up with a rusty knife the night they marry you off; then you are cut open and re-stitched. Life for a circumcised woman is a series of deflowering pains, delivery pains and re-stitching pains. I want to spare my daughter these and many other pains. She will not be circumcised.
Nothing much happens in the novel beyond the tracing of various tensions and frustrations. It ends with a minor purge. The husband is disgraced, beaten up and reconciled with his wife. There are deportations and possibly executions to come. The General remains, remote and patriarchally irremovable. Circumcision, matriarchally irremovable, goes on, but perhaps Medina’s daughter will be spared. Perhaps. The novel leaves the outcome in the air.
Much has happened in Somalia since 1981, none of it good: it is one of the unhappier places in the world. But the practice of FGM remains a sanctioned and honoured institution. It is estimated that ninety-nine per cent of young girls in Somalia undergo it. Farah’s novel artfully defines the critical issues that the practice raises. It is practised almost exclusively by women on women. Historically FGM was put down by colonial powers – prohibition led by Christian missionaries who found it an abomination. In the struggles of colonially oppressed countries, notably Kenya, it was aggressively revived during the period of insurgency as an assertion of cultural independence. Kenya’s best-known – and defiantly post-colonial – novelist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, has taken up what many see as an ambiguous position on the practice. In short, it’s a fiendishly difficult issue. Farah’s novel diagnoses the difficulty with a great novelist’s sensitivity. Fiction is one of the few places where the complexities can be fully articulated.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2019
wonder full
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2014
Second book of trilogy called 'Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship', Nurrudin Farrah looks at the impact of despotism on families led by women in 1970s Somalia.
The way Farrah manages to convey the deep scars a dictatorship regime leaves on an individual without the reference to major events in the lives of the characters is spectacular. It is indeed with subtlety that the author manages to convey the complex intricacies of such a regime's impact on everyday people's lives. How one had to stand in line for hours to get milk or sugar, how some were tormented with the desire to join the 'movement' against the dictatorship and the consequences on a mother who loves her daughter dearly yet disagrees with the regime, the determination of a wife to oppose the government and live by a code that denounces its practices despite the consequences on her marriage, etc,
The book also explores the weight of the traditions and how it sometimes is an accomplice to dictatorship.
A historic book as well as Farrah wrote it probably with General Mohamed Siad Barre who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991 in mind.
My first Farrah but certainly not my last. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Africa, stories from the perspective of women and history.
“I fear the descending knives which re-trace the scarred wound, and it hurts every instant I think about it” (Sardines, 58)
A brilliant book.
The way Farrah manages to convey the deep scars a dictatorship regime leaves on an individual without the reference to major events in the lives of the characters is spectacular. It is indeed with subtlety that the author manages to convey the complex intricacies of such a regime's impact on everyday people's lives. How one had to stand in line for hours to get milk or sugar, how some were tormented with the desire to join the 'movement' against the dictatorship and the consequences on a mother who loves her daughter dearly yet disagrees with the regime, the determination of a wife to oppose the government and live by a code that denounces its practices despite the consequences on her marriage, etc,
The book also explores the weight of the traditions and how it sometimes is an accomplice to dictatorship.
A historic book as well as Farrah wrote it probably with General Mohamed Siad Barre who ruled Somalia from 1969 to 1991 in mind.
My first Farrah but certainly not my last. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Africa, stories from the perspective of women and history.
“I fear the descending knives which re-trace the scarred wound, and it hurts every instant I think about it” (Sardines, 58)
A brilliant book.
April 10, 2011
I love Farah's expressive prose, and found this story as captivating as Sweet and Sour Milk. The book is a multifaceted exploration of the varied issues facing African women and their varied responses. While it is difficult to avoid skepticism when reading a book written by a man from such a heavily gendered social context, Farah's story clearly aims to represent the complexity of African feminist issues.
I was introduced to Nuruddin Farah through his novel Links, which I read as part of a diversity book club at school (SEED). The book, which is part of a trilogy of novels on returning to Somalia captivated me with its lyric prose and devastating description of war-torn Mogadishu. I've since read Knots, second in the "return" series, and Sweet and Sour Milk, an older book in a trilogy on the theme of African dictatorship.
I finished this book around the New Year, appropriate because that is also the setting for the book.
Although Sardines and Sweet and Sour Milk were written 30 years ago, I still found them to be useful informants for amking sense out of the North African revolutions.
I was introduced to Nuruddin Farah through his novel Links, which I read as part of a diversity book club at school (SEED). The book, which is part of a trilogy of novels on returning to Somalia captivated me with its lyric prose and devastating description of war-torn Mogadishu. I've since read Knots, second in the "return" series, and Sweet and Sour Milk, an older book in a trilogy on the theme of African dictatorship.
I finished this book around the New Year, appropriate because that is also the setting for the book.
Although Sardines and Sweet and Sour Milk were written 30 years ago, I still found them to be useful informants for amking sense out of the North African revolutions.
February 9, 2011
A difficult read this one, mostly because it is dark, grey, very internal, with an oppressive government just looming behind everyone. Sardines follows the lives of Medina, who loses her job as the editor of the national newspaper of Somalia. She struggles to bring up her young daughter Ubax, as her friend Sagal is herself trying to figure out whether she wants to flee Somalia or take part in some subversive political action, and discovering that she might be pregnant. Farah tends towards metaphors and lyrical, but meandering prose, but Sardines was in the end an interesting, complex read. Sardines is part two of Farah’s Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy which also includes Sweet and Sour Milk and Close Sesame, which, judging from Sardines, can be read independently.
September 22, 2008
Farah's penchant for verbosity comes across aplomb in this book, with long meandering passages that don't seem to carry the same focus as they did in Sweet and Sour Milk (the first book in the trilogy). Even with that, though, beautiful prose still comes through, and tons of metaphors and symbols come in play as well. I couldn't help but feel sort of annoyed at the end of the novel when a character explicitly said something was a metaphor when he had already made it clear by mentioning it in juxtaposition to dictatorship and facism, etc.
April 14, 2017
I'm not sure if I ever finished reading this book... I just remember being seriously annoyed with it and finding it a super slow read in college. It's a shame, because the first page seemed so promising and pulled me in--but maybe I wound up disliking it so much because the professor of that class was a terror and I hated most of the texts. I also tend to dislike anything I'm forced to read, which is why I usually rate any book I even remotely enjoyed in college 4 stars and up. Who knows. I doubt I'll wind up giving this one another shot.
July 25, 2011
Best yet! Made the mistake of starting with book 3 in the trilogy, finished with this one, book 2 - it works, but would have made more sense starting at the beginning. I'm hoping to convince Nuruddin Farah to read his books on-air on Bar-Kulan radio. www.bar-kulan.com
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May 12, 2019superb
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