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Lightbulb moments: Nadifa Mohamed on writing The Fortune Men

A close, head-and-shoulders portrait of Nadifa Mohamed, she is wearing a pink head scarf

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How a 17-year-old newspaper article inspired Nadifa Mohamed to Booker success

Nadifa Mohamed

Grippingly-paced and full of complex, richly-drawn characters, the novel combines pointed social observation with a deeply empathetic sensibility. The Fortune Men demonstrates what historical fiction can achieve at its best

Maya Jasanoff, Chair of the Booker Prize 2021

[An] expert illumination of real-life racial injustice in the cultural melting pot of 1950s Cardiff

Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men is an elegant portrayal of life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiff's Tiger Bay in the early Fifties. Eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid characters, it centres on the plight of Mahmood Mattan, who finds himself in the shadow of the hangman's noose for a murder he didn't commit

Smart and devastating, there's a reason it's one of our books of the year

Stylist, Unmissable Fiction Buys From 2021

A potent, pointed novel . . . Mohamed is a big talent, and she's only getting started

The Fortune Men is a novel on fire, a restitution of justice in prose

Based on real events, Mohamed's novel is panoramic in its scope and rich in period atmosphere, vividly tracing the desperate livers of the victim and the accused

In her determined, nuanced and compassionate exposure of injustice, Mohamed gives the terrible story of Mattan's life and death meaning and dignity

A searing and moving look at institutional racism and the helplessness you can feel in the face of prejudice

A writer of great humanity and intelligence. Nadifa Mohamed deeply understands how lives are shaped both by the grand sweep of history and the intimate encounters of human beings

Chilling and utterly compelling, The Fortune Men shines an essential light on a much-neglected period of our national life

The Fortune Men describes how innocence is forced to justify itself before gross injustice. A novel of tremendous power, compassion and subtlety, it feels unsettlingly timely

The Fortune Men confirms Mohamed as a literary star of her generation. When Mohamed's prose - simple and full of soul - illuminated him, Mahmood emerges as a beacon of humour, hope and endurance

The Fortune Men is that rare novel that breaks your heart and, in so doing, gives you life. Nadifa Mohamed is a revelation - she writes with the fierce compassionate lightning of a truth-teller, lays bare the ghastly colonial condition that afflicts so many of us, where truth cannot overcome injustice. If a novel can be an avenger then The Fortune Men is the one we've all been waiting for

The writing carries a depth of humanity that puts the reader right in the shoes of the characters - the clothes they wear, the streets they walk, the emotions they feel . . . [The Fortune Men] is filled with the hope of how things should be and the truth of how things are. All of it, the life of Mahmood Mattan, the system convicting him of this murder, and the community that allows it, all brought painfully into focus with Mohamed's unflinching and gifted prose

Mohamed balances colonial history and violence with the evocative interior lives of Mahmood and Violet Volacki, a fictionalized Volpert . . . brilliantly depict[ing] the complexities of community within the Black diaspora . . . [she] manages such tender detail even while zooming out on the British prison and court systems more broadly

Mohamed's novel, very much in the US genre of exposing racial injustice, is also an atmospheric account of Tiger Bay in 1952 and of the forgotten multiculturalism that allowed Mattan to marry a local girl, Laura, who for years campaigned to clear his name

Mohamed is . . . intent on expanding her world, listing its teeming varieties and presenting a wealth of character and language

Heaving with life . . . The Fortune Men excavates the forgotten reaches of British colonial history . . . The purposeful detail is an implicit corrective to all the times when the lives of people like Mattan have not been considered at all

Nadifa Mohamed's richly evocative novel paints a vivid picture of life in this notorious neighbourhood as she visits a forgotten miscarriage of justice

[Mohamed] creates an intriguing snapshot of an era and a complex main character you can't help but root for

It's unbearably wrenching . . . Mohamed makes the outrage at the book's heart blazingly unignorable by inhabiting Mattan's point of view, a bold endeavour pulled off to powerful effect. Passages from the barbaric climax are still echoing in my head, even as I type

Just as Half of a Yellow Sun drew out the little documented dramas of the Biafran war, Mohamed describes an East Africa under Mussolini's rule . . . such an accomplished first novel

A first novel of elegance and beauty... a stunning debut

A haunting and intimate portrait of the lives of women in war-torn Somalia

New York Journal of Books, on The Orchard of Lost Souls

Mixing startling lyricism and sheer brutality, this is a significant, affecting book

With the unadorned language of a wise, clear-eyed observer, Nadifa Mohamed has spun an unforgettable tale

Taiye Selasi, on The Orchard of Lost Souls

A moving and captivating tale of survival and hope in a war-torn country, and confirms Mohamed's stature as one of Britain's best young novelists

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, petty criminal. He is many things, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. Witnesses allegedly saw him enter a shop that night and love lends him immunity too: the fierce love of his wife, who forgives his gambling in a heartbeat, and his children. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of returning home dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and cruelty - and the truth may not be enough to save him.

The Fortune Men

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Nadifa Mohamed

Praise for The Fortune Men

Grippingly-paced and full of complex, richly-drawn characters, the novel combines pointed social observation with a deeply empathetic sensibility. The Fortune Men demonstrates what historical ...

[An] expert illumination of real-life racial injustice in the cultural melting pot of 1950s Cardiff

Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men is an elegant portrayal of life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiff's Tiger Bay in the early Fifties. Eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid character ...

Grippingly-paced and full of complex, richly-drawn characters, the novel combines pointed social observation with a deeply empathetic sensibility. The Fortune Men demonstrates what historical ...

[An] expert illumination of real-life racial injustice in the cultural melting pot of 1950s Cardiff

Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men is an elegant portrayal of life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiff's Tiger Bay in the early Fifties. Eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid character ...

Grippingly-paced and full of complex, richly-drawn characters, the novel combines pointed social observation with a deeply empathetic sensibility. The Fortune Men demonstrates what historical ...

[An] expert illumination of real-life racial injustice in the cultural melting pot of 1950s Cardiff

Nadifa Mohamed's The Fortune Men is an elegant portrayal of life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiff's Tiger Bay in the early Fifties. Eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid character ...

Articles featuring Nadifa Mohamed

Lightbulb moments: Nadifa Mohamed on writing The Fortune Men

How a 17-year-old newspaper article inspired Nadifa Mohamed to Booker success

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