The Fortune Men
SynopsisPlot
Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman's noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.
Story
About this book
In 1952, Mahmood Mattan, a young Somali sailor living in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, is accused of the murder of Violet Volacki, a local shopkeeper. Tiger Bay at that time was a busy docklands district where Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese merchants, and Jewish families lived side by side. Mahmood is a gambler and occasional petty thief, a father of three, and estranged from his Welsh wife Laura. He is confident that his innocence will protect him, trusting in British justice to sort matters out. But as the trial approaches, the ground shifts beneath him.
The novel is based on a real case. Mahmood Mattan was the last person executed under a death sentence in Cardiff, and his conviction was quashed decades later, in 1998. Nadifa Mohamed reconstructs his story from the inside, following Mahmood through the weeks before and during the trial as a flawed police investigation, institutional prejudice, and deep-rooted racism close around him. The book gives close attention to the community of Tiger Bay itself, its overlapping cultures and tensions, and to the people whose testimony and silence shaped Mahmood's fate.
