Close Sesame

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 on an African Dictatorship, in particular, has earned him enormous critical acclaim
and is considered “the centerpiece of Farah’s achievement” by the Guardian.

In Close Sesame, the final book in the trilogy, the characters are deeply entwined in the
waking nightmare of a police state. An old man finds himself poised in mortal combat with
an elusive and cunning enemy in an atmosphere where the distinction between public and
private justice is obscured.