Hiding in Plain Sight - by Nuruddin Farah (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A bold new novel that "augments a body of work worthy of a Nobel Prize" (Kirkus Reviews), from the internationally acclaimed author of North of Dawn

Nuruddin Farah--"the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years" (The New York Review of Books)--returns with a provocative, unforgettable tale about family, freedom, and loyalty. A departure in theme and setting, Hiding in Plain Sight is a profound exploration of the tensions between liberty and obligation, the ways in which gender and sexual orientation define us, and the unintended consequences of the secrets we keep.

When Bella, a fashion photographer living in Rome, learns of her beloved half-brother's murder, she travels to Nairobi to care for her niece and nephew. But when their mother resurfaces, reasserting her maternal rights and bringing with her a gale of chaos and confusion that mirrors the deepening political instability in the region, Bella must decide how far she will go to obey the call of sisterly responsibility.

Review Quotes

Praise for Hiding in Plain Sight

"This novel -- Farah's 12th -- takes us deep into the domestic life of a sophisticated African family, with great emotional effect... Each of the kids...becomes starkly real in their intelligence, ingenuity, anger, and grief. Even their outrageous mother (and her selfish choices) seems credible ...This family, our families, Africa and Europe and America, have never seemed closer in the way we live now -- and this engaging novel, from its explosive beginning to its complex yet uplifting last scenes, shows us why." --Alan Cheuse, NPR

"Absorbing and provocative... [Farah's] characters are given heft through personal histories and anecdotes, and he writes evocatively about everything from Nairobi traffic to Kenyan game reserves to, importantly, how Somalis are seen not just through the eyes of others, but through their own." (4 stars) --USA Today

"Hiding in Plain Sight may begin with a terrorist attack...but this is not a novel about violence...The rewards of reading Hiding in Plain Sight lie in Farah's sensitive exploration of grief and his depiction of a family's love for one another...Farah is particularly adept at evoking the way in which the sight of a familiar face or place can trigger painful memories and how comfort can come to us from unexpected sources." --New York Times Book Review

"A rich exploration of political and social crises...[and] a sensitive story about living in the shadow of grief, learning to forgive and trying to answer the question, "What does it mean to be Somali in this day and age?" --Washington Post

About the Author

Nuruddin Farah is the author of eleven previous novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages and won numerous awards, including the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa, and Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he is Distinguished Professor of Literature at Bard College.