Somali Writer Wishes to Make ‘Pather Panchali’ Like Film

London, Oct 30, 2013 (SDN) -Nadifa Mohamed, a Granta best young British novelist, likes images formed in the mind to take a physical shape and says she would love to make something as honest and beautiful as “Pather Panchali” but set in her birthplace Somalia.  “I have always loved films and used to watch Bollywood movies in Hargeisa as a child, I would love to make something as honest and beautiful as ‘Pather Panchali’ but set in Somalia,” the London-based writer of “Black Mamba Boy” and the recent “The Orchard of Lost Souls” says.

“I think it would be amazing to see images that you formed in your own mind take a physical shape, and for many other people to collaborate on that vision. There are things of such beauty in Somalia/Somaliland that outsiders never see and a film would illuminate them,” Nadifa, who aspires to be a filmmaker, told PTI in an interview. She has already started the process of adapting “The Orchard of Lost Souls” into a feature film.

Nadifa was born in the Somali city of Hargeisa in 1981 while Somalia was falling deeper into dictatorship. In 1986, she moved to London with her family in what she thought was a temporary move but a couple of years later it became permanent as war broke out in Somalia.

Her father’s stories were the basis of her debut novel “Black Mamba Boy”.

“The Orchard of Lost Souls”, published by Simon & Schuster and set in Hargeisa, is the story of three women – nine-year-old Deqo, an orphan born and raised in the Saba’ad refugee camp; Kawsar, a well-off widow in her 50s whose late husband was the city’s chief of police before the public offices were purged; and Filsan, an ambitious young soldier in her late 20s.

Source: business-standard.com