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Nadifa Mohamed

Michael Berkeley’s guest is novelist and poet Nadifa Mohamed. With music by Pergolesi, Vaughan Williams and Max Richter.

Since the publication of her first novel while she was still in her twenties, Nadifa Mohamed has been a writer to watch. Her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, won her the Somerset Maugham Award and gave her a place on the prestigious Granta List of Best Young Novelists. She’s about to publish her third novel, and is also turning it into an opera – a commission from the Royal Opera House. What’s striking in all her work is the epic sweep of her storytelling, which explores themes of exile and survival: her characters are caught up by war and love. Nadifa herself left Somali-land in northern Somalia when civil war broke out and she was only four when she came to Britain in 1985.

She talks to Michael Berkeley about her dramatic family history, and about her father, who was a travelling troubadour in Sudan. She pays tribute too to the Somali musician Hudeidi, who died of Covid this last April. He was her teacher on the oud for seven years, and her mentor, and she spent many evenings jamming with him in his west London flat. Her musical choices range from Pergolesi, Purcell and Vaughan Williams to Max Richter, Toumani Diabate and Louis Armstrong.

Produced by Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3

Available now

36 minutes

Last on

Sun 17 Jan 2021 12:00

Music Played

  • Ahmed Hudeidi

    Uur Hooyo

  • Henry Purcell

    When I am Laid in Earth (Dido and Aeneas)

    Ensemble: L’Arpeggiata. Director: Christina Pluhar. Singer: Raquel Andueza.
  • Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

    Stabat Mater Dolorosa

    Ensemble: Les Talens Lyriques. Director: Christophe Rousset.
  • Dinah Washington & Max Richter

    This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight

  • Ralph Vaughan Williams

    The Lark Ascending

    Performer: Nicola Benedetti. Orchestra: London Philharmonic Orchestra. Conductor: Andrew Litton.
  • Taj Mahal & Toumani Diabaté

    Queen Bee

  • George Gershwin

    Bess, you is my woman now (Porgy and Bess)

    Performer: Louis Armstrong. Performer: Ella Fitzgerald.

Broadcast

  • Sun 17 Jan 2021 12:00

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