Voices, views and post-colonial experiences of somali women in The orchard of lost souls, by Nadifa Mohamed

Abstract

The Orchard of Lost Souls is an African novel written in English. The main plot unfolds mainly through the voices, life experiences and eyes of three Somali characters, namely, Deqo, Filsan, and Kawsar. The narrative portrays a fragmented post-colonial Somalia, characterized by foreign political influence and local conflicts. It is in this adverse, and many times unpredictable, sociopolitical context that the three women, of different generations, seek to survive in their own particular ways. Their trajectories, characterized by multiples encounters and separations, past and present, take them to a journey of (re)discoveries and (re)constructions of an identity crossed by gender, age, and local and global sociocultural issues. This paper presents a brief analysis of the process of identity ruptures and the characters’ resignifications that are transculturally translated by Nadifa Mohamed’s poetic writing. The transcultural nature of Mohamed’s writing lies in the fact that she is a British writer born in Somalia. The reflections triggered by this brief analysis are supported by postcolonial and decolonial theories due to the need to identify and understand the issues mediated by literary discourse and forms of their representations. The paper reveals, among other things, the importance of Mohamed’s novel as an expressive and powerful means of retrieving and weaving historically erased female memories.