Its vastness and duplicity require more than mere exertion to be wrestled into submission – yet Mohamed, with the slightest cast of nostalgia, conjures it masterfully. The Tiger Bay of the 1950s is an intimidating location for any author to establish. Anyone familiar with the true case of Mahmood Mattan will not find much of the minutiae of the police conspiracy which condemned Mattan to death, instead, Mohamed focuses her attention on the rich inner life of an outwardly taciturn Mahmood.

The Fortune Men is told primarily from the perspective of Mahmood, a merchant seaman in his late twenties, and follows the events which lead up to his wrongful conviction for the murder of shopkeeper and moneylender Lily Volpert (here, renamed Violet Volacki in accordance with the wishes of living relatives). Set amongst the smoky tower blocks and sea-soaked docklands of Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, Mohamed reimagines an area that – in mid-century Cardiff – was a treasure trove of diversity, a settling place for multitudes of international seamen and workers alike. One novelist to opt for the latter of these techniques is Nadifa Mohamed who, in her third novel The Fortune Men, retells the tragic true story of Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a young Somali man wrongly convicted, and later executed, for a murder he didn’t commit in 1950s Cardiff. Some authors return to the pages of centuries past to reimagine the epochs of history à la Hilary Mantel, while others tread the rocky and volatile terrain of a history still ensnared within that wide net of living memory.

True, the skeleton of the plot is readymade – yet to bring real figures to life, to effectively season with research, and to deftly handle any residual emotional baggage is by no means a small feat. Caragh Medlicott reviews The Fortune Men from Nadifa Mohamed, a novel which recounts the true story of Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a Somali sailor who was hanged for a crime he did not commit.Įffectively novelising a true story requires a lot of writerly instinct.

Nadifa mohamed the fortune men