"The Fortune Men" by Nadifa Mohamed

In 1952, Tiger Bay in Swansea is a melting pot of different nationalities; there are tensions between the indigenous white community and those they describe as 'black'. Somali Mahmood Mattan has married a white woman and fathered three sons but now, unemployed and a gambler with a criminal record for petty theft, he is separated. So, when local shopkeeper and money-lender Violet is found murdered, the police arrest Mahmood. This novel, based on a real case, and told in the present tense, mostly from the third-person perspective of Mahmood, chronicles what happens next.

It is beautifully written and explores Mahmood's life growing up in what was the British Somaliland and later became a merchant seaman, working in the engine room and travelling all over the world, before settling in Tiger Bay. The descriptions of the multi-cultural communities in Tiger Bay is also fascinating.

I found it a little slow at the beginning but towards the end I was page-turningly desperate to find out what happened. 

My only criticism is, as regular readers of this blog will guess, the use of foreign words. Use them, please, to give colour and authenticity. But offer translations as footnotes or a glossary.

The book was shortlisted for the both Booker Prize and the Costa award in 2021. Other Booker shortlisted novels, many reviewed in this blog, can be found here.

Selected quotes:

• "Talking to the dregs of society. Knowing their habits better than they do. Holding your dinner down when confronted with their bestial acts, that's the knack to this job." (Ch 5)
• "She savours these moments first thing, before the past, present and future have solidified, when time feels timeless and screeching seagulls have safely navigated her from dreams of soundless wailing." (Ch 6)
• "The macalim [teacher] taught Mahmood that becoming a man was like turning wood into charcoal: a process of destruction until something pure and fiercely incandescent emerged." (Ch 7)
• "This didn't have to be the sum total of his life: this vista, this horizon, this language, these rules, these taboos, this food, these women, these laws, these neighbours. these enemies." (Ch 7)
• "One second he can understand everything, then they change frequency, like a fuzzy radio, and go into their university talk, leaving him with only isolated words to hold on to." (Ch 9)
• "They think a man stupid because he talks with an accent, but he wants to shout, 'I teach myself five languages, I know how to say "fuck you!" in Hindi and "love me" in Swahili'." (Ch 9)
• "In the touch of her hands they felt love, while he sensed pollution, in her laughter he heard betrayal, while they saw pleasure, in the distant gaze that he read as slyness, they perceived sadness." (Ch 10)
• "She was a tree that he wanted to chop down, and he used the law as his axe." (Ch 10)
• "'Yallah! Yallah! [O God] No way to put out the fire but to burn it!' Those were words to live by." (Ch 11)

September 2022; 370 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God