This book was short listed for the Booker prize last year and is a retelling of a real life injustice. It is in 1952 in the multiracial Tiger Bay of Cardiff, Wales. It recounts the wrongful imprisonment and execution of Mahmood Mattan, a Somali seaman and father of three young boys, who was the last man to be hanged in Cardiff prison. Fabricated evidence, false witness testimonies and institutionally racist policing led to him being found guilty of the murder of a shopkeeper.
The most tragic part is that Mattan is sure that the famous British justice system will exonerate him, and so he at first does nothing to tone down his shape-shifting character, variously positioned as a rakish antihero, plucky picaro, petty thief, charismatic dreamer, prideful gambler, doting father, anti-colonial firebrand and speaker of truth to power.
The most searing element of Mattan’s incarceration is his spiritual contemplation when behind bars, interspersed with evocative flashbacks to his childhood in fractious British Somaliland and recollections of his risky life in the merchant navy. Mattan’s tender aspirations and vulnerabilities are brought to the fore, balancing out a man often dismissed by those around him as reckless and troublesome. The wrong done to him was eventually reversed decades later, but not before ruining the lives of his wife and children.
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