(United Kingdom) A Somali-British writer, Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa and moved to England with her family in 1986. Her father was a sailor in the merchant navy and Mohamed attended Oxford University, where she studied History and Politics. Her first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2009), won the Betty Trask Award in 2010 and was nominated for prizes like the Guardian First Book Award (given by the newspaper The Guardian), the Dylan Thomas Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, all in 2010. The book was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize that year. In 2013 she was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists and published her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls, set in Somalia during the civil war. Mohamed lives in London and is working on her third novel.