NADIFA MOHAMED was born in 1981 in Hargeisa, Somaliland. At the age of four she moved with her family to London. She is the author of Black Mamba Boy and The Orchard of Lost Souls. She has received both The Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award, and in 2013, she was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Her work appears regularly in The Guardian and the BBC. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she lives in London.