Acclaimed author Nuruddin Farah has spent much of his adult life exiled from his native Somalia, but has never ceased to write about it. "I eat Somali. Sleep Somali. I live with the dust of Somalia in my eyes," he says. Now resident in Cape Town, Farah has also lived in Kaduna in northern Nigeria, and has held teaching positions in countries ranging from the US to the Gambia and Sudan. And yet all of his 11 novels are set in Somali-speaking communities, the aim being to "keep my country alive by writing about it." PROFILE OF NURUDDIN FARAH