Publisher's Synopsis
Set in Somalia just after its independence in the 1960s, this book is a collection of nine short stories that paint vivid portraits of the many different lives that intertwine along the Horn of Africa. A ruthless horse dealer comes up against the best tracker in the Somali army; transplanted Italian farmers look to a future of stark disintegration as they struggle to hold on to their lands and their families; gutsy American women attempt to establish lives of their own in the remote East African desert; and a beggar and an idealist meet in a chance encounter on the steps of a Mogadishu bank, with mind-numbing consequences. Based on the author's own time spent in East Africa, this is an evocative collection for the reader interested in Somalia's birth as a nation.
