Frankfurt/Cape Town, October 02, 2007 - Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah tops the list of African authors at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which features an Africa Day this year. Farah, who has been described as the most important author to come out of the continent in the last 25 years and won the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1998 for his work Secrets, is seen as a strong contender for the Nobel Literature Prize.

He is also often hailed as a feminist writer for his treatment of women characters in his English-language novels.

Writing is "just my job," the 61-year-old told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa. His latest work Knots - the second novel in his third-published trilogy - has just been published.

He is scheduled to participate in a panel discussion on the "high art of African storytelling" at the book fair that has also drawn the participation of several African intellectuals, authors and rising literary names.

In conversation, the softly-spoken Farah displays a knack for a good story or anecdote, drawing from his spells living in various African countries and his frequent visits abroad.

His native country will always inform his work, which, he says, though sold as novels, amounts to a long story set in one location: Somalia.

"Although it is written separately and published separately for commercial reasons, it is one long novel," Farah says.

"Usually I like to have a long view of things rather than a short view. Trilogies give me an opportunity to look at related things over a long period of time," he explains.

Farah, who credits Nigerian literary great Chinua Achebe for encouraging his interest in literature, says he is "most comfortable with what I know," referring to Somalia.

He has, however, not lived in Somalia for more than three decades after deciding in 1974 not to risk returning while on trip to Italy after his novel, A Naked Needle, offended Somalia's then dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

He returned for the first time in 1996 to a still volatile Mogadishu.

Even while living in several African countries, eventually settling in the South African city of Cape Town in the late 1990s, Farah never strayed from the strife-torn east African country and its legacy of dictatorship, warlords, violent upheaval and patriarchy in his works.

Last year, he returned home on the invitation of Somalia's warring parties - Islamist factions and Somalia's federal government - to help mediate an end to the conflict.

The outcome was not what he had hoped for, he told dpa, adding that he would gladly return to play a role in bringing peace at the source of his inspiration.

" Somalia is a country that has been in a civil war for too long. There are some positive signs in that we know prior to 2006, there were many factions fighting for power. Now there are only two groups," he says.

The debate will focus on writing, reading and listening, according to Peter Ripken, the project manager of the fair's international centre, who believes the inclusion of an Africa component, rights the "deficit" of previous years.

He was also due to attend the launch of an audio series of eight African novels, including his Secrets and books by Nigerian literary giant Chinua Achebe, Cameroon-born writer and academic, Patrice Nganang. The series is intended for German consumption.

Farah's debut short story From a Crooked Rib (1970), was published in the critically acclaimed Heinemann's African Writers' Series and lauded as his first "feminist" work.

Women feature strongly in his work, including his latest novel Knots, which details the return of a Somali woman to her ever- volatile homeland capital, Mogadishu, after 20 years in exile in North America.

Farah was born in Baidoa in 1945. He obtained a degree in theatre in India and a postgraduate degree in the field in Britain.

Fluent in Arabic, English, Italian, Somali and the official Ethiopian language, Amharic, Farah has lectured in Mogadishu, the United States, Germany, Italy, Nigeria, Sudan and India.

He has penned two complete trilogies: Sweet and Sour Milk (1979), Sardines (1981) and Close Sesame (1983), under the theme Variations on the theme of an African dictator and Maps (1983), Gifts (1993) and Secrets (1998), which make up Blood in the Sun.

Farah comes across as unassuming and passionate about the rights of women in Africa and beyond, with a highly focused and dedicated writing routine.

"Writing is my job," he says.

Source: dpa