The Orchard of Lost Souls

The Orchard of Lost Souls is a 2013 novel by the Somali-British author Nadifa Mohamed. It is set in Somalia on the eve of the civil war. Her second book, coming four years after her award-winning debut work Black Mamba Boy (2009), it was published by Simon & Schuster.

Reception
Reviewing The Orchard of Lost Souls in The Independent, Arifa Akbar said: "If Mohamed's first novel was about fathers and sons ... this one is essentially about mothers and daughters." Aminatta Forna wrote in The New York Times: "In both 'Black Mamba Boy' and 'The Orchard of Lost Souls,' Nadifa Mohamed — generationally at a remove from the events she describes — shows how the echo of war reverberates down the generations, and why every nation needs its storytellers: someone to, if not make sense of events, then order them so that sense may be drawn." Anita Sethi's review in The Observer concluded: "This novel shows its author blossoming into her talent with her own innovative, at times pulse-quickening style, distilling startling language from loss."

Awards
In 2014, The Orchard of Lost Souls won the Somerset Maugham Award and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize.