经济学人下载:索马里之子-来自非洲的声音

The novel debunks the view that the “religionists” restored order in Somalia. Spoiling for battle with its Christian neighbour, Shabaab ignores the trauma of the 1977 Ogaden war with Ethiopia, the subject of Mr Farah’s “Maps” (1986). Shabaab’s militiamen, who are now obstructing aid in Somalia’s latest famine, kick the corpse of an Ethiopian soldier in a repetition of the “self-dishonouring dance around a dead Marine” that shocked the world in 1993.

小说破除了“宗教分子”在索马里恢复秩序这一观念。沙巴布憋足了劲想和基督教邻国作战，无视1977年与埃塞俄比亚的欧加登战争的创伤，欧加登战争是法拉的《地图》（1986年）的主题。沙巴布民兵目前正在索马里的最新饥荒中阻挡各种援助，而在重复1993年震惊世界的“围绕着一名死亡的海军陆战队员跳自辱性舞蹈”的事件中，沙巴布民兵踢的是埃塞俄比亚士兵的尸体。

There are traces here of the dreams and proverbs that enrich Mr Farah’s fiction (“the shoes of a dead man are more useful than he is”). But “Crossbones” leans heavily on research and recent political events. An impassioned urgency in bearing witness makes this illuminating trilogy less poetic and polished than his earlier novels—but no less powerful for that.

这里有梦想和谚语的痕迹，正是梦想和谚语丰富了法拉的小说（“一个死人的鞋子比他更加有用”）。但是，《死亡髅骷》着重倾向研究方面和最近的政治事件。迫切地急于见证使得这部启蒙三部曲比他早期的小说缺少了诗意和润饰，但这些并没有让这部三部曲逊色。