Seeing acutely in Farah's 'Hiding in Plain Sight'

The Somali writer Nuruddin Farah has lived much of his life outside of his country. Self-exiled after the publication of A Naked Needle (1976), a novel critical of post-revolutionary Somalia, he now visits often. But before he could return to live there, he recently told NPR, "Somalia has to change."

Through his many clear-eyed, nuanced novels, Farah has kept his beloved home alive, both in his heart and in the minds of people who know it solely as a place torn apart by a decades-long civil war.

His latest, the absorbing and provocative Hiding in Plain Sight, centers on Bella, a Somali and cosmopolitan fashion photographer who lives in Rome. She moves to Nairobi to raise her niece and nephew — who attend boarding school there — after a tragedy: Her brother, Aar, who worked for the U.N., is killed by extremists in Mogadishu.

Enter Valerie, the mother who abandoned the children a decade earlier. She's visiting Kenya from India with her partner, Padmini — that is, they arrive after a brief stint in a Ugandan jail for being gay — and her claim to the children adds chaos to the charged situation.

The question of what it means to hide in plain sight — and to whom you tell your secrets— plays out among all the characters. Bella keeps her personal life private in part to maintain control of her independence. Valerie, visiting a continent mostly hostile to the LGBT community, believes she must hide her sexuality from her children, as well.

And the children, second-generation exiles, want to be accepted as citizens of their adopted home (Kenya), but feel acutely overlooked and disenfranchised. In fact, they live there thanks only to European passports granted through their father's job.

It's through their eyes that Somalia recedes heartbreakingly in the rearview mirror.

Photography also plays a central role in Nuruddin's narrative. As exemplified through Bella, the photographer remains unseen but powerful. And a family photo album — proof of this new family unit's shared history and, so, of their identity — pored over by the children helps explain the deep love and loyalty to a homeland no longer home.

Farah's attention to detail keeps the novel grounded. His 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.

Hiding in Plain Sight

By Nuruddin Farah

Riverhead

4 stars out of four