A review by tevreads
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed

4.0

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021. ‘The Fortune Men’ by Nadifa Mohamed is a fictionalised retelling of the wrongful conviction a Somali man in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, 1952. This story builds to the trial where the protagonist Mahmood is betrayed by the greed and embedded racism of witnesses and the courts. As a verdict is reached and the hanging takes place, Mahmood’s faith and sanity slip away as his belief in humanity and fairness are ripped away. Mohamed writes in a way that builds suspense and prophetic hope for the reader, it’s impossible not to feel remorse for the injustice of this innocent man. I didn’t know until the epilogue that this was a real account of criminal injustice, that Mahmood’s case was revisited many years later and deemed the first miscarriage of justice rectified by a British court. A powerful novel that is worthy of a Booker shortlist.