DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2017.v05i12.013

Pages: 1845-1849

Nuruddin Farah’s Maps is the story of the orphan Askar, a child of the Ogaden, a border territory claimed by both Somalia and Ethiopia. Askar is a child with magical, mysterious gifts, whose coming to consciousness is both a personal biography and a history of the fierce war of liberation being waged in the Horn of Africa between the Western Somali Liberation Front and the Ethiopian forces that presently occupy the Ogaden. This paper is an attempt to study Farah’s concept of nation, self and identity in the narrative. It also studies the narrative strategy of endless telling and retelling from a variety of perspectives to map the concept of self and nation.