See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Somalia (including Somaliland).
These numbers are crunched by hand, not by AI.
| Title | Author | Goodreads raters | LibraryThing owners |
| Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War | Mark Bowden | 68,067 | 4,798 |
| A House in the Sky | Amanda Lindhout | 70,898 | 1,187 |
| Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth | Warsan Shire | 21,170 | 513 |
| In the Company of Heroes: The Personal Story Behind Black Hawk Down | Michael J. Durant | 5,877 | 533 |
| Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head | Warsan Shire | 9,123 | 239 |
| Desert Dawn | Waris Dirie | 4,340 | 468 |
| Call Me American: A Memoir | Abdi Nor Iftin | 4,561 | 233 |
| The Orchard of Lost Souls | Nadifa Mohamed | 1,822 | 216 |
I’m going to start providing summaries of the winning books (should probably have done that much sooner). Black Hawk Down, published in 1999, is about the unsuccessful 1993 US military raid in Mogadishu to try and capture a local warlord. It was later adapted into a film directed by Ridley Scott.
It’s a bit unfortunate that three of the top four books, including the top two, are about violent foreign experiences of Somalia rather than giving voice to the people themselves, and I also freely admit that I’ve stretched a point with Warsan Shire’s two poetry collections – on a quick scan, they did seem to be well grounded in Somalia as a location, but I did not go through and tally pages. The Orchard of Lost Souls represents Somaliland here; hopefully some day we’ll be able to tally it separately.
I disqualified ten books. Ayaan Hirsi Ali leaves Somalia early in her autobiography, Infidel, and does not return; the second volume of her autobiography, Nomad has her travelling further afield. Desert Flower, Waris Dine’s better known book, is mostly set in the UK. When Stars Are Scattered, by Victoria Jamieson, and City of Thorns, by Ben Rawlence, are mostly in Kenya. Don’t Tell Me You’re Afraid, by Giuseppe Catozzella, is about the refugee experience en route to Europe. Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard, is mostly set in, er, Djibouti. Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men is mainly set in the UK, and her Black Mamba Boy is mostly in Yemen. Ilhan Omar’s This Is What America Looks Like is more about her life in the USA than her life before.
Next up: Senegal, Romania, Guatemala and the Netherlands.
Asia: India | China | Indonesia | Pakistan | Bangladesh (revised) | Russia | Japan | Philippines (revised) | Vietnam | Iran | Türkiye | Thailand | Myanmar | South Korea | Iraq | Afghanistan | Yemen | Uzbekistan | Malaysia | Saudi Arabia | Nepal | North Korea | Syria | Sri Lanka | Taiwan | Kazakhstan | Cambodia | Jordan | UAE
Americas: USA | Brazil (revised) | Mexico | Colombia | Argentina | Canada | Peru | Venezuela | Guatemala | Ecuador | Bolivia | Haiti | Dominican Republic | Honduras
Africa: Nigeria | Ethiopia (revised) | Egypt | DR Congo | Tanzania | South Africa | Kenya | Sudan | Uganda | Algeria | Morocco | Angola | Mozambique | Ghana | Madagascar | Côte d’Ivoire | Cameroon | Niger | Mali | Burkina Faso | Malawi | Zambia | Chad | Somalia | Senegal | Zimbabwe | Guinea | Benin | Rwanda | Burundi | Tunisia | South Sudan
Europe: Russia | Türkiye | Germany | France | UK | Italy | Spain | Poland | Ukraine | Romania | Netherlands | Belgium
Oceania: Australia