Yasmine Allas (Yaasmiin Callas)

Who is she?

Yasmine Allas is a Somali-Dutch actress and writer, born in Mogadishu in 1967 (Wikipedia, Yasmine Allas). Her father was a general in the Somali army and was killed in 1977 (same source). She attended a private school in Mogadishu, where she learned Italian and English (same source).

At fourteen she joined her mother's relatives in Saudi Arabia, then moved to Belgium and, in 1987, to the Netherlands (same source). She speaks Somali, Italian, English and Dutch (same source). See Somalis in the Netherlands.

Acting

She trained at drama school in Amsterdam and began acting in the late 1980s with the theatre group The Trust (Wikipedia). In 1995 she played Gretchen in that company's production of Faust by Gustav Ernst (same source). She also worked for several years with the director Theu Boermans and had her own solo show (same source).

Writing

Her books, all in Dutch, are (Wikipedia):

• Idil, een meisje (Idil, a girl), 1998
• De generaal met de zes vingers (The general with six fingers), 2001
• De blauwe kamer (The blue room), 2004
• Ontheemd en toch thuis (Uprooted but still home), essays, 2006
• Een nagelaten verhaal (A handed-down history), 2010, inspired by her 2006 return to Somalia

In 2006 she went back to Hargeisa for a television documentary about her youth (same source). She has written for the newspaper de Volkskrant (same source). The Dutch Foundation for Literature keeps an author page on her (Letterenfonds).

In short

A Mogadishu-born actress and novelist who has written five books in Dutch since 1998.