Adua (2015) by Igiaba Scego: a father, a daughter and Italy's colonial past

The book

Adua is a novel by Igiaba Scego, who was born in Rome in 1974 to Somali parents who had left Somalia after the 1969 coup; her father, Ali Omar Scego, was a Somali politician (Wikipedia). It was published in Italian by Giunti in 2015, and in English, translated by Jamie Richards, by New Vessel Press in 2017 (Wikipedia; Powell's).

The story

Adua is a Somali woman living in Rome. As a girl in Somalia she had imagined Italy, through the films she loved, as a place of freedom, and in the 1970s she went there hoping to become a film star. Instead she was exploited by the producers of a sexually explicit film that relied on stereotypes of African women. Decades later, older and still unsure where she belongs, she sits by Bernini's elephant statue in Rome and speaks to it (The Literary Review).

Her father, Zoppe, is a harsh and distant figure. As a young man in the 1930s, in Mussolini's Italy, he worked as a translator for the colonial power. He was beaten by soldiers because he was black, and he refuses to speak about that past (The Literary Review). The history behind his part of the story is on Fascist rule and the war, 1923 to 1941.

In the present day Adua meets a young refugee, Ahmed. He gives her a video camera and urges her to tell her own story (The Literary Review).

Its structure

The novel moves between three voices: Adua's own, sections titled "Talking To" in which Zoppe addresses his daughter, and Zoppe's first-person account of the 1930s. Scego has said the book covers three historical moments: Italian colonialism, Somalia in the 1970s and the present (Cleaver Magazine). It mixes African fable, family stories and references to literature and cinema (The Literary Review).

How it was received

• A reviewer in The Literary Review called it a "lyrical" novel and praised Jamie Richards's translation (The Literary Review).
• Reviewers in the United States read it as a portrait of Italy's colonial history across several generations (CounterPunch; Foreword Reviews).
• Scego had earlier won the Premio Mondello in 2011 for her family memoir La mia casa è dove sono (Wikipedia).

Where to read it

• English edition: Powell's
• In a library: WorldCat

Related pages

• Madre piccola (2007), Ubah Cristina Ali Farah
• Somalis in Italy
• Somali authors and their books