Mahmood Mattan’s legal case is not the only miscarriage of justice in the novel. I knew I wanted to make the line between fact and fiction imperceptible so immersed myself in the minute details of Mahmood’s life so that I could almost think his thoughts. It was only in 2015 that I started writing it as a novel and began conducting interviews in Cardiff, London and Hargeisa. I first came to read about the case in 2004 and for the next 11 years kept checking in as more information became available. How long has this story been with you, and what did it take to translate it to fiction? The Fortune Men is based on a true crime. I’m going back to the novel that The Fortune Men interrupted a contemporary novel set in the world of Somali women in London. The Hiding Placeby Trezza Azzopardi was shortlisted in 2000 and is a haunting novel set in Tiger Bay in the 60s, but my absolute favourite is probably The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. What is your favourite Booker-winning or Booker-shortlisted novel? McKay even worked as a stoker on ships crossing the Atlantic so had both this practical experience of working-class Black life as well as a modernist way of communicating that life. For this novel it is Sam Selvon, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston and other writers who lived on the fringes in many ways. Which authors have influenced or inspired your own writing? How does it feel to have The Fortune Men longlisted for the Booker?Ībsolutely wonderful, it has brought many more readers to a story that for too long has only been known about by a minority.

The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed