He’s a thief, a gambler and often his own worst enemy, as we see during his arrest and trial, when his attitude rubs everyone up the wrong way and makes things worse for himself. Even when Diana and Grace say that Mahmood was not the man they saw, the police are adamant that they’ve caught the right man and that he will hang for what he’s done.Īlthough we know Mahmood is not a murderer, he is not a particularly easy character to like either. However, when Violet Volacki is found dead on the floor of her shop, her throat slit and a large sum of money missing from the safe, Mahmood is blamed just because the victim’s sister and young niece – Diana and Grace – reported seeing a Somali man standing in the shop doorway just before the murder took place. He’s struggling to find work and is drifting into a life of petty crime and theft, with any money he does have being spent on gambling. Things are not going well for Mahmood at the beginning of the novel – he has separated from his wife, Laura, a Welsh woman who lives nearby with their three sons, and he is staying in a boarding house with several other men, none of whom make him feel very welcome.
His name is Mahmood Mattan, a Somali sailor who has settled in the dockland area of Tiger Bay. After a while, the focus tightens to concentrate on two main characters: the murder victim and the man accused of the murder. I found the opening chapters of the novel slightly overwhelming, as we are introduced to a large number of characters of various nationalities and backgrounds, switching quickly from one viewpoint to another, but in hindsight I think this was probably intentional, designed to throw the reader straight into the bustling, multicultural heart of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay as it would have been in 1952. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers in this review! If you don’t already know all the details of the trial and its outcome, I would recommend not looking them up until you’ve finished the book.
It’s based on a true story – the trial of a Somali man accused of murder in 1950s Wales. I enjoyed her previous book, The Orchard of Lost Souls, and was looking forward to this one, particularly as it has been so highly acclaimed, being shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and Costa Novel Award and longlisted for the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The next book I’ve read from my 20 Books of Summer list is Nadifa Mohamed’s third novel, The Fortune Men.
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