Hiding in Plain Sight

Author Essay

Dear Reader,

HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT is only the second novel of Nuruddin Farah’s that I’ve edited, although I was aware of – and in awe of – his international reputation long before. What I’ve come to appreciate most deeply in working with him is how human-scale his stories are, how intimate the connections they explore between friends and lovers and family members, wherever they live.

This latest novel is a bit of a departure for Nuruddin. It opens briefly in his native Somalia, where Aar is killed in a suicide bombing at the UN compound where he works. His half-sister, Bella, a globe-trotting photographer, returns to her home in Rome to news of his death. Farah is known for his feisty female characters, but Bella – sophisticated, nontraditional, impossible to pigeonhole or fence in – is a true free spirit. So the dilemma that faces her, whether to give up her independence for the sake of her beloved brother’s children in Nairobi, is a particularly dramatic one. And with the arrival of the children’s mother, a drama queen who has long ago abandoned them but now resurfaces with her girlfriend to stake her claim to them, things get really interesting.

I loved watching how Nuruddin lets his characters unfold, and the detail with which he conveys daily lives that are in some ways very much like our own, against the backdrop of a tumultuous and sometimes violent culture. Tragically, just as Farah was finishing his initial draft of the novel, his own cherished sister, a humanitarian aid worker who had devoted herself to working with refugees, was killed in a bombing in Kabul that eerily mirrored the novel’s opening. In the months that followed, Nuruddin, deep in mourning, nevertheless pushed through the revisions. I believe that the loss suffuses the novel, heightening the heartbreaking and gorgeous contrast between the countless small ways we care for one another and the forces over which we have no control.

All best,

Becky Saletan

Editorial Director, Riverhead Books