Nuruddin Farah, From a Crooked Rib

F. Fiona Moolla (University of the Western Cape)

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Ed. by Helen Rachel Cousins, Birmingham Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Alex Nelungo Wanjala (University of Nairobi)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1970

Places

Somalia (Country of Origin)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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From a Crooked Rib

is Anglophone Somali writer Nuruddin Farah’s first novel and the first Somali novel in any language. The novel was written in a month and a half in 1968 when Farah was a student at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. In the essay “Ibsen, in other words” Farah describes the context of the novel’s composition. Bewildered at the range of literature in the university library, Farah was encouraged to read Henrik Ibsen’s

A Doll’s House

by a female classmate (Farah 2015: 15). Amazed at the power and provocation of the play, Farah acknowledges Ibsen’s major influence on

From a Crooked Rib

, with strong resemblances between Ebla, his own protagonist, and Nora, Ibsen’s heroine. The novel was published in 1970 in the iconic Heinemann African Writers Series,…

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2197 words

Citation: Moolla, F. Fiona. "From a Crooked Rib". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 December 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30482, accessed 03 April 2025.]