Maps (Blood in the Sun No. 1)

Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Nuruddin Farah is one of Africa's most respected contemporary writers. Maps is the first novel in his acclaimed Blood in the Sun trilogy, set in his native land. Askar lost his father in the bloody war between Ethiopia and Somalia, and his mother died giving birth to him. Taken in by Misra, a kindhearted woman, he grows up in a small village. But as an adolescent, a true child of his times, he begins to feel suffocated there and goes to live with his cosmopolitan aunt and uncle in the capital. In dangerous and turbulent Mogadiscio, Somalis are struggling to recreate a national identity that has been destroyed by the upheavals of modernity and the betrayals of civil war. Askar throws himself into radical political activity in the midst of the turmoil. As allegations of murder and treason are leveled at Misra, Askar's personal sense identity and Somalia's political boundaries will be challenged with a ferocity he could have never imagined.