<p><b>From one of <i>Granta</i>'s Best of Young British Novelists, a stunning novel illuminating Somalia's tragic civil war</b><br><br><br>It is 1987 and Hargeisa waits. Whispers of revolution travel on the dry winds, but still the dictatorship remains secure.<br><br> Soon, through the eyes of three women, we will see Somalia fall.<br><br> Nine-year-old Deqo has left the vast refugee camp where she was born, lured to the city by the promise of her first pair of shoes.<br><br> Kawsar, a solitary widow, is trapped in her little house with its garden clawed from the desert, confined to her bed after a savage beating in the local police station.<br><br> Filsan, a young female soldier, has moved from Mogadishu to suppress the rebellion growing in the north.<br><br> As the country is unraveled by a civil war that will shock the world, the fates of these three women are twisted irrevocably together.<br><br> Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa and was exiled before the outbreak of war. In <i>The Orchard of Lost Souls</i>, she returns to Hargeisa in her imagination. Intimate, frank, brimming with beauty and fierce love, this novel is an unforgettable account of ordinary lives lived in extraordinary times.</p>