Sweet and Sour Milk

Winner of the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, Nuruddin Farah is often praised as Africa’s greatest contemporary novelist. The trilogy Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, in particular, has earned him enormous critical acclaim and is considered “the centerpiece of Farah’s achievement” by The Guardian.

Sweet and Sour Milk, the first novel in the trilogy, chronicles a man’s search for the reasons behind his twin brother’s violent death during the 1970s. The atmosphere of political tyranny and repression reduces his quest to a passive and fatalistic level, and the book progresses largely on an inner plane.

“A chilling exploration of corruption and terror… Farah has given us a powerful political statement that moves constantly toward song.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Farah is in control of his enormous talents as a novelist, writing in the best tradition of Solzhenitsyn and Gabriel García Márquez.”—World Literature Today

Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship is published in partnership with the College of Saint Benedict as a part of a series honoring the legacy of S. Mariella Gable, a distinguished teacher at the College.