17 Facts About Nadifa Mohamed

Nadifa Mohamed was born on 1981 and is a Somali-British novelist.

Nadifa Mohamed featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in 2014 on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.

Nadifa Mohamed has written short stories, essays, memoirs and articles in outlets including The Guardian, and contributed poetry to the anthology New Daughters of Africa.

Nadifa Mohamed became Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University in Spring 2022.

Nadifa Mohamed's father was a sailor in the merchant navy and her mother was a local landlady.

Nadifa Mohamed later attended the St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she studied history and politics.

Nadifa Mohamed's first novel, Black Mamba Boy, described in The Guardian as "a significant, affecting book of the dispossessed", is a semi-biographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and '40s, during the colonial period.

In 2013, Nadifa Mohamed released her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls.

In December 2013, Nadifa Mohamed was one of 36 writer and translator participants at the Doha International Book Fair's Literary Translation Summit in Qatar.

Nadifa Mohamed was chosen as one of Granta magazine's "Best of Young British Novelists" in 2013, and in April 2014 was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.

Nadifa Mohamed's writing has been published in such outlets as The Guardian and Literary Hub, as well as in the anthology New Daughters of Africa, which includes poetry by Mohamed.

In June 2018, Nadifa Mohamed was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in its "40 Under 40" initiative.

Nadifa Mohamed joined the English Creative Writing faculty of Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2018.

Nadifa Mohamed has said that her next book will be "a contemporary novel set in the world of Somali women in London".

In 2023, Nadifa Mohamed was commissioned by Channel 4 to present the historical documentary Britain's Human Zoos, about Britain's fascination, dating from the late Victorian era, with objectifying Black and Brown people in "human zoos" for the purpose of entertainment.

At the 2024 Edinburgh TV Festival, Nadifa Mohamed won the Best Presenter award.

Also for Channel 4, Nadifa Mohamed presented the film Churchill: Britain's Secret Apartheid, aired on 19 October 2024.