THE DISORDER OF THINGS, a Foucauldian approach to the work of Nuruddin Farah

307 pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2013

John Masterson offers a reading of Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah, arguing that the preoccupations that have remained central to Farah's writing can be mapped onto some key concerns in Michel Foucault's work.

"It is extremely exciting to see John Masterson's thoroughgoing critical engagement with the work of the leading African writer Nuruddin Farah come into the world, especially a study that does proper justice to the writer's expansive oeuvre, his political complexity, his preoccupations with body politics in and of the nation, and his fine attention to style. No Africanist should be without this masterful study." Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford

John Masterson is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of the Witwatersrand.