Quote by Nuruddin Farah: “Exile is a country without a language.”

To be exiled is not just to lose a home — it is to lose the sounds, words, and ways of speaking that gave you a sense of self. Language is how we belong. Without it, or in a foreign tongue, even your own thoughts can feel homeless.

Farah was living in exile from Somalia through the 1980s, having left after threats from the Siad Barre dictatorship. Somalia's authoritarian government was suppressing political dissent and regional clan identities, and for Somali writers abroad, the question of writing in exile — for whom and in which language — was urgently personal.

Somali novelist whose trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship and later novels are considered among the most important works of African literature in English. He has spent much of his life in exile, and his writing consistently examines the politics of identity, gender, and power in Somalia.