Black Mamba Boy - Nadifa Mohamed

The purpose behind Black Mamba Boy is a simple one. It’s the author’s attempt to record for posterity the journey undertaken by her father in 1930’s Somalia, a journey measured in years of abuse and hardships endured as well as kilometres crossed, but along the way it’s also a testimony to the actions of the occupying Italian military forces in Somalia, Abyssinia, Eritrea and Sudan and atrocities committed there by the troops of Mussolini’s fascist regime.

In a way, in the growth of Jama, the upheaval he undergoes in the loss of his mother, in his search for his father, in his subsequent attempts to stand on his own two feet and make his fortune, can also be seen as the growth of a nation or a continent trying to find its own place in the world. Nadifa Mohamed’s writing isn’t perhaps strong enough to give the novel this greater dimension, but perhaps that’s not the author’s intention.

Taken simply as an account of an extraordinary childhood and upbringing and a remarkable tale of survival, Black Mamba Boy is a fine debut novel with moments of genuine horror and poignancy in minor details and observations of the time and place of its setting, made all the more real for the author’s investment in the person of Jama, her father, who clearly means so much to her.

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