Foreign Native

What happens when the country you love no longer exists - and neither does the one you live in?

In 1988, Chuck, a fiercely proud young Somali with dreams of studying medicine, leaves socialist Somalia for England. When his country collapses into civil war and his money runs out, his degree vanishes with it. Stranded in a place whose customs he does not understand, cut off from his family and unable to find stable work, Chuck's frustration hardens into a deep mistrust of the people around him. He clings to an idealised vision of home, certain that one day he will return to a Somalia that welcomes him back unchanged.

Twenty years later, now with a job, a marriage and children in the UK, he finally goes back. What he finds is not the homeland he carried in his memory, but a fractured, dangerous new reality. The streets, the politics, even the social codes are altered beyond recognition. Women and men alike are struggling under the weight of ignorant, brutish and misogynistic power, fighting - often quietly, often at great cost - to reclaim their futures. Caught between the country that shaped him and the country that sustained him, Chuck must confront the uncomfortable truth that he has become a foreigner in both, and decide what his love of Somalia really means.

A Foreign Native by M H Siyid is a powerful novel about migration, identity and the price of belonging in a globalising world. It captures the inner lives of a generation who left home in search of safety, dignity and meaning, only to discover that returning is sometimes the hardest journey of all.