With The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed takes her place among the growing crop of British artists and writers of colour – including Reni Eddo-Lodge, Steve McQueen and Jay Bernard – committed to correctively shining a light on recent British history. Set in 1952 among the “tumbledown” docks, milk bars and lodging houses of Cardiff’s multiracial Tiger Bay, The Fortune Men is Mohamed’s third book. It is predominately through her depiction of Mattan’s imprisonment that Mohamed achieves this layered complexity. The most searing element of Mattan’s incarceration as imagined by Mohamed is his spiritual contemplation when behind bars. He had needed to be humbled […] he can see God’s wisdom so clearly now.”In her determined, nuanced and compassionate exposure of injustice, Mohamed gives the terrible story of Mattan’s life and death meaning and dignity.

Source: The Guardian May 28, 2021 07:52 UTC