Called to Song - Kharnita Mohamed

Qabila's marriage is falling apart - it has been for years. If she had not fallen pregnant she and Rashid might not have married in the first place. After all, he was seeing Thandi at the time. And now Qabila wonders if he ever stopped seeing her. Does that explain why Qabila has never felt the full measure of his love? At least he is not abusive, her mother would say, unlike Qabila's father. But with her mother's passing, Qabila's world is coming undone. She is dreaming of strange songs and making lists to stay sane. When she finds out Rashid is living a double life, she demands a divorce. Why does he still resist? Why not go to Thandi?. As she tries to pick up the pieces of her life, Qabila rails against the persistent legacy of discrimination in South Africa. Not least of which is the racism in her own community towards fellow black people. But she also rediscovers the joy of family, and her Muslim faith, and meets a group of musicians who might be the answer to her puzzling dreams.

Orchard of Lost Souls - Nadifa Mohamed

It is 1987 and Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds, but still the dictatorship remains secure.

Soon, through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall.

Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp where she was born, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes.

Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the local police station.

Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the rebellion growing in the north.

As the country is unraveled by a civil war that will shock the world, the fates of these three women are twisted irrevocably together.

Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa and was exiled before the outbreak of war. In The Orchard of Lost Souls, she returns to Hargeisa in her imagination. Intimate, frank, brimming with beauty and fierce love, this novel is an unforgettable account of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary times.