Nuruddin Farah, Sweet and Sour Milk

F. Fiona Moolla (University of the Western Cape)

Ed. by Helen Rachel Cousins, Birmingham Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester), Alex Nelungo Wanjala (University of Nairobi)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1979

Places

Somalia (Country of Origin)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Sweet and Sour Milk

was Somali writer Nuruddin Farah’s third Anglophone published novel, and the first novel of the Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy.

Sardines

(1981) and

Close Sesame

(1983) are the two novels that complete this trilogy.

Sweet and Sour Milk

is also the first African novel that takes as its central theme the question of postcolonial dictatorship, a genre that is very well known in the Latin-American context, and that has become well-established in African literature also through writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ahmadou Kourouma, Maaza Mengiste and Hisham Matar, to name just a few. The trilogy of which

Sweet and Sour Milk

forms a part is “probably the most extensive and sustained single-authored exploration of…

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1582 words

Citation: Moolla, F. Fiona. "Sweet and Sour Milk". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 March 2020 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=30485, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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Nuruddin Farah, Sweet and Sour Milk

Dates

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