“They are Blind to Mahmood Hussein Mattan”: Exposing Institutional Racism in Nadifa Mohamed’s « The Fortune Men »

Interview

Introduction

Nadifa Mohamed’s first novel, Black Mamba Boy (2010), pays tribute to her family history. By penning a fictionalized account of her father’s childhood in 1930s Yemen and his travels across East Africa, then under Mussolini’s control, Mohamed “turn[ed] [her] father’s blood and bones […] into history” (Mohamed qtd. in The Independent), capturing the way that personal longings—for a father, roots, and home—interweave with the historical backdrop of colonial violence and war. Mohamed herself moved from Hargeisa, in the Republic of Somaliland, to London in 1986 as the Somali Civil War broke out and her literary work is deeply attuned to the way that private stories are embedded within the wider history of colonialism and racist violence. In her second novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls (2013), Mohamed turned to Somali history in particular and the period of unrest leading up to the civil war. With a special focus on women, Mohamed dissects the effects of male-dominated political structures, the violence of dictatorship, and the agency retained by individuals amidst the historical events by which they are shaped, and which they shape in turn. Her third novel, The Fortune Men (2021), which is based on a real-life case and was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, offers another perspective on the way structural phenomena profoundly alter the lives of people.

In 1952, Mahmood Hussein Mattan, a Somali man and former sailor living in Cardiff, was unjustly executed for a crime that he did not commit: the murder of Lily Volpert, a forty-two-year-old Jewish shopkeeper. Only in 1998 was Mahmood’s innocence finally recognized and the conviction posthumously quashed, Mahmood’s family being offered compensation by the Home Office and an apology from the South Wales Police (BBC). In The Fortune Men, Mohamed offers a fictionalized account of Mahmood’s and Lily’s stories, drawing on her research and her father’s own stories of Somali sailors—he had even met Mahmood (Mohamed and Alameddine, 2021, 4:47-5:03)—to recreate the vibrant world of 1950s Tiger Bay. In this novel, Mohamed analyzes the way “the system consumed” and “destroyed” (7:32) an innocent man, who was turned into a criminal because of the racist biases of the judicial system.

The exposure of institutional racism and its consequences on the British judicial system is central to The Fortune Men. In her novel, Mohamed uncovers the collective racist biases that led to Mahmood’s execution and questions the alleged impartiality of the British judicial system. I will firstly discuss the way Mohamed “novelizes history” (Mohamed and Alameddine, 2021, 19:46) by writing fiction based on a real-life case. I will then analyze how the fictional imagination at work in the novel opposes the cold language of legal procedures so as to expose injustice. Lastly, I will contend that The Fortune Men sheds light on the institutional racism responsible for this miscarriage of justice by undermining British nationalistic discourse.

1. “Novelizing history”

In an interview with Mohamed, author Rabih Alameddine described her literary undertaking in The Fortune Men as “novelizing history” (Mohamed and Alameddine, 2021, 19:46), to which Mohamed replied that she indeed “stay[ed] close to the facts” (19:51-19:55), though the author’s note in the book insists that “The Fortune Men is a work of fiction […] all the characterizations and the narrative are entirely fictitious”. Mohamed explained her process of writing: she relied on newspaper articles, the National Archives, and interviews with people to conduct her research, but the “real liberty [she] took” was with the characters’ “thoughts and feelings” (20:32-21:20). In the novel, the people involved in the real-life case become characters whose inner world is disclosed, whose passions and reflections are made accessible to the reader.

This “novelizing” of the real case does not undermine the point made by Mohamed on the injustice done to Mahmood. On the contrary, fiction permits a shift in perspectives that leads to a “stance ‘from the inside’” which “involves sharing the point of view of those we write about” and becomes a way to “emphasize the need to listen to the subject’s perspective while being able to critically evaluate the structures that govern their lives” (Yadav et al., 2024, 5). While archival files are steeped in procedural language and occasional comments from the historical actors who played a part in the case, Mohamed’s novel partakes in a revisionist endeavor (Yadav et al., 2024, 8) that seeks to understand how such injustice could have been committed as well as illuminate the relationship between individual agency and institutional structures. The process of “novelizing history” thus enables the author to steer away from a mere succession of facts in order to “reveal prejudices and oppression” (6), thereby offering an interpretation of historical events.

While the diegesis is geographically and historically contextualized by the opening paratext (“Tiger Bay, February 1952”), the precise description of Tiger Bay, with its numerous shops and multicultural inhabitants (“this army of workers pulled in from all over the world”, 4), recreates the social climate of the place. This historically-contextualized incipit lays the necessary groundwork for the political argument made in the novel: that the British judicial system treats minorities differently due to racist biases. What appears to be mere historical contextualizing and description in the novel actually hints at the relations of power at play in Welsh society in the 1950s, which the narrative voice underscores. According to the authors of “Revisiting Trauma and Recorrecting the Damage”, “the residents of Cardiff were always secluded and different adjectives for their identification were used. They were not considered Welsh, either they were distinguished on their native place of inheritance or they were simply classified under the umbrella word ‘Cardiff’, as Mohamed calls Volacki […] ‘Cardiff Shopkeeper’” (Yadav et al., 2024, 10). This attention to ethnicity in the opening pages of the novel hints at the crucial role played by nationality and skin color in 1950s Wales. It echoes Mahmood’s remark that he was “far beyond being just […] a Somali, a Muslim, a Black. […] But now those labels are pinned into his flesh […] And his blackness? […] That was the one he was mad to think he could ever outrun” (322). Consequently, to “novelize history” is to interpret history at the same time, to make an argument on a historical period or event by providing analysis through fiction.

2. Fictional imagination versus the cold language of procedure

Though The Fortune Men is grounded in historical facts, the process of “novelizing history” comes with the elaboration of a language that is radically different from historical, judiciary, or journalistic prose. To Mohamed, the newspaper accounts that she read for her research made Mahmood “into a kind of simpleton, this naive foreign sailor who is killed because he’s in love with a Welsh girl, and all of the fire in him is not there” (Mohamed and Alameddine, 2021, 12:39-12:55). In the case file, however, Mahmood appeared “sharp, and hostile, and sarcastic towards the police” (12:57-13:01), which gave a glimpse of what his personality might have been like, while the procedural language of newspaper articles or jurists dehumanized and objectified Mahmood, took out the “fire” in him.

This phenomenon is well exemplified in the novel, for instance in the conversation between Mahmood and the prison doctor. A first level of objectification is achieved by the doctor “tak[ing] Mahmood’s height, weight, temperature, blood, urine”, reducing him to his physical attributes (154). The following step is asking Mahmood about his “life story”, though the doctor’s questions remain factual: “When did you arrive in Britain?”, “Can you read or write English?”, “Do you have any injuries or disabilities?” (155). The doctor’s conclusion completes Mahmood’s dehumanization by using a naturalistic and racist language, with the expression “negroid individual” (157). The latent racism present in the doctor’s last comment, “with excellent teeth” (157), is underlined by the narrative through free indirect speech: “Mahmood […] doesn’t like white people talking about his teeth because it’s something they only compliment coloureds on, as if it’s some kind of miracle that they have something beautiful about them” (157). Mahmood’s barrister is equally racist as he questions Mahmood’s very being: “What is he? Half child of nature? Half semi-civilized savage?” (294). The pronoun “what”, italicized to express the barrister’s emphasis, is used to refer to an object—as opposed to the pronoun “who”, referring to a person—which dehumanizes Mahmood as it questions his very nature as a human being. In addition to this, the clichés of the “child of nature” and “semi-civilized savage” partake in a racist classification that establishes a hierarchy between “civilized” and “uncivilized” or “savage” people along the lines of ethnicity and skin color. The novel therefore exposes the ways in which the language of the institutional actors involved in the case, with its pretense of objectivity, cannot be impartial because it is steeped in racist discourse.

In an interesting reversal, it is the allegedly factual accounts of the police, witnesses, and jury that are presented as “fictions” told about Mahmood (211). Indeed, there is in reality nothing factual about them: a “non-existent moustache and gold teeth” are “place[d] on his face”, “desirable inches” are “add[ed] to his height”, to fit a previously given description of the culprit (212). The actors involved in the trial are thus “blind to Mahmood Hussein Mattan and all his real manifestations: the tireless stoker, the poker shark, the elegant wanderer, the love-starved husband, the soft-hearted father” (212), which the novel on the contrary restores: this accumulation of five nouns referring to Mahmood, coupled with a different adjective each time, underscores the many facets of Mahmood’s character, humanizing him in the face of the racist and procedural language that reduces him to the position of alleged culprit.

The occasional use of analepsis in the novel serves the same purpose, making Mahmood into a fully fleshed-out character. While the institution of the prison physically traps Mahmood into a cell, the analeptic episodes always show Mahmood in a different geographical location: his journey all the way from Somaliland to Wales highlights Mahmood’s mobility and resourcefulness (172-190), the last time he had prayed was in Mombay in 1949, aboard the SS Emmeline (160), while the SS Glenlyon took him to Australia (336). This emphasis on mobility restores to Mahmood the agency taken away by the prison. Furthermore, pieced together, these different episodes from Mahmood’s life amount to “one long film with mobs of extras and exotic, expensive sets” (318). This filmic metaphor, as well as the many different locations depicted in the analeptic passages, reaffirm Mahmood’s position as the protagonist of his own life, focusing on his agency and dignity against the debasing discourses of Mahmood’s barrister and dehumanizing institutions.

3. Exposing institutional racism

By drawing attention to Mahmood’s psyche, past, and agency, the novel paints an ethical portrait of Mahmood, a portrait that evades the caricatural and objectifying portrayals of procedural accounts. Yet the racist representations pervading the case, against which Mohamed writes, ultimately sealed Mahmood’s fate, which leads the author to expose the profound institutional racism responsible for his execution: her “centring [of] the narrative on Mahmood Mattan’s experiences and the racial injustices he endured” means “challeng[ing] the prevailing historical accounts of 1950s Cardiff” (Yadav et al., 2024, 8). In The Fortune Men, the racist biases pervading institutions in the United Kingdom are revealed by the debunking of British nationalistic discourse.

When it comes to racial relations of power, the novel shatters the distinction between “civilized” and “uncivilized”, a dichotomy which has long justified racial domination and colonialism in Western ontology (Said, 1993, 17). On the contrary, as pointed out by the authors of “Revisiting Trauma and Recorrecting the Damage”, the narration emphasizes Mahmood’s firm morality: when he “got an offer to share the wife of another British man […], [i]t was like learning that he was surrounded by the cannibals, his mind couldn’t unwrap it, how could a man do that to his wife? To his children? To himself?” (Mohamed qtd. in Yadav et al., 2024, 9). Another instance of moral failure attributed to white Britons occurs when a woman suggests that Laura and she could testify against Mahmood together and split the money of the reward offered by Violet’s family (206). This example sheds light on the fact that, for this white woman, money is worth more than the life of a black person. The Welsh young man attacking Laura in plain sight is another example of moral wrongdoing, through which Mohamed lays bare the violence perpetrated by white supremacists in Welsh society as the man claims that “they should hang the little niggers along with their dad” (241). By displaying such incidents of morally condemnable attitudes within white Welsh society, Mohamed undermines the nationalistic hierarchy established between supposedly moral white Britons and barbaric, violent, or immoral racialized others. The novel thus “subvert[s] the image of Britain as a civilized nation and bring[s] forward the barbaric attitudes inherent among the proud citizens” (Yadav et al., 2024, 9), rejecting the degrading stereotypes associated with racial minorities in racist discourse.

As the example of the barrister’s racist speech illustrates (294), the racism existing in British society is also institutionalized. Institutional racism can be defined as “the structures, policies, practices, and norms resulting in differential access to the goods, services, and opportunities of society by race. Institutionalized racism is normative, sometimes often manifests as inherited disadvantage. It is structural, having been codified by our institutions of custom, practice, and law, so there need not be an identifiable perpetrator” (Jones, 2002, 10). In that respect, The Fortune Men exposes the ways in which racism operates within the “famous British justice” (208)—an element central to nationalistic representations of the United Kingdom ((Rabih Alameddine points out that colonialism is strongly associated with the “feeling that the Western legal system is the right one” (41:55-42:00). In the novel, this idea is embodied by the (ironic) expression “the famous British justice”, and later debunked by praise of the Somali legal system (361).))— by showing that this system of justice is, in fact, not color-blind and does not always rest on “proper evidence” (208). Even worse, British institutions like the police would not “go easy on any man unless he got money or know the right people” (123).

The impartiality of the system is questioned by the powerful assertion that an individual’s racist bias, if they are in a position of power, may determine the outcome of a case. Just as the novel presents Mahmood as a complex character, the plot underscores the responsibility of individuals within the institutional system. Justice is ultimately rendered by humans and is based on testimonies, which means that “racial prejudices, inadequate legal representation, and biased judicial practices collectively contributed to the miscarriage of justice” (Yadav et al., 2024, 13). The centrality of individual responsibility in Mahmood’s condemnation is reflected by the character of Powell, a policeman whose decisive role in the case is insisted upon: “the police are beginning to hate [Mahmood]; there’s something personal brewing here, they speak his name too freely, and want to believe he is capable of anything” (112), he was “outwitted by a clever Welsh policeman” (311), “is it God or Powell who put him here?” (350). Powell’s own thoughts and system of values are revealed in the fifth chapter, through the use of indirect speech. Firstly, his personal grudge against Mahmood is made clear: “Mattan is wilder than he expected, a real rogue with no respect for authority, a covetous darkie with no fixed abode” (105). The racist expression “darkie” then operates a transition between Powell’s dislike of Mahmood and his generalizing discourse on Somali people, showing how Powell’s resentment is ultimately tied to racist representations that would incriminate any Somali man: “they [Somalis] are truculent and vicious, quick to draw a weapon and unrepentant after the fact” (105). Besides Powell, other actors are also singled out, such as Doc, Monday, Billa Khan, and the racetrack man, who “were singing to the police’s tune” (207), as well as the “old bigot shopkeeper” and informers who could have been “hassled into saying something, anything, by the police because they had dirt on them” (207). The responsibility of not only Powell and the police but other characters stresses the fact that interpersonal relationships can get in the way of impartial evaluation, as the system of justice relies on the testimonies of biased individuals. Ultimately, it is the racist biases of the powers that be which seal Mahmood’s fate.

In the end, the novel powerfully exposes that because the representatives of institutions—such as Powell, the barrister, or the jury—are white Welshmen in positions of power whose systems of belief are steeped in racist representations, institutional justice cannot be impartial and inherently discriminates against ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom.

Commented excerpt

This passage, taken from the penultimate chapter, is one of the most striking analeptic episodes in the novel. As Mahmood still awaits the outcome of his appeal for royal pardon, he talks with the prison wards and recalls his journey to Australia aboard the SS Glenlyon (336-340).

The poetic aspect of this extract generates a change of pace, deviating from the urgency of the plot. The narrative voice takes on a poetic tone and resorts to personification through verbs relating to human action, as if to breathe life into the nightly scenery: “the sea had softened but seemed to mock them”, “watch them [falling stars] dance” (338). Just as the frontier between animate and inanimate seems to be transcended, chronological and geographical boundaries are also blurred: “a strange vertigo set in with sky and sea indistinguishable”, “he could have been anyone, in any time or place, even at the beginning of history”. This dream-like, out-of-time, atmosphere is reinforced by the mythological figure of King Neptune. Although it is later explained that King Neptune is in fact a disguised sailor and his appearance when crossing the Equator is part of a navy tradition (339), the first direct reference to him takes the reader off guard, steering the narration towards the realm of the fantastic, caught in between reality and fiction ((Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic is summarized as such by Lem and Abernathy: “the fantastic character of a text resides in a transient and volatile state during the reading of it, one of indecision as to whether the narrative belongs to a natural or a supernatural order of things” (1974, 229).)). 

These poetic and fantastic elements create a sharp contrast with the previous chapters—twelve, fourteen and fifteen—where the narration had morphed into a sequence of questions and answers, reflecting through literary form the procedural interactions between the participants of the trial. Conversely, the poetic style of the narrative voice in this excerpt, associated with Mahmood’s first journey across the Equator, momentarily takes the reader’s focus away from Mahmood’s execution in order to draw attention to the richness of the protagonist’s life. While Mahmood’s death had been the main concern of the previous pages, the linearity of chronology is broken by this analepsis to celebrate a precious memory from Mahmood’s past and emphasize his agency against the seclusion of prison. Refusing to reduce Mahmood to the status of prisoner and mere victim in the hands of institutions, Mohamed insists upon the protagonist’s force of character until the very end of the novel.

Bibliography

JONES, Camara Phyllis. 2002. “Confronting Institutionalized Racism”, Phylon, volume 50, n°1/2, pp.7-22. URL: https://doi.org/10.2307/4149999.

MOHAMED, Safia. 2019. “‘Killed by Injustice’: The Hanging of a British Somali”, BBC, 28 January 2019. URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/hanging_of_british_somali_mahmood_mattan.

MOHAMED, Nadifa and ALAMEDDINE, Rabih. 2021. “The Fortune Men”, YouTube. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1ZMuXnPt9g.

MOHAMED, Nadifa. 2021. The Fortune Men. London: Penguin Books.

LEM, Stanislaw and ABERNATHY, Robert. 1974. “Todorov’s Fantastic Theory of Literature”, Science Fiction Studies, volume 1, n°4, pp.227-37. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238877.

SAID, Edward W. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Vintage.

YADAV, Priyanka, SAXENA, Shalini, GODARA, Abhishek, GOKHRU, Swati, RANI, Neelam and CHOUDHARY, Ritu Raj. 2024. “Revisiting Trauma and Recorrecting the Damage: A Study of Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men”, SSRN. URL: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4971003.

Cette fiche a été rédigée dans le cadre d'un Master 2 à l'ENS de Lyon.

Pour citer cette ressource :

Pauline Tauzin, “They are Blind to Mahmood Hussein Mattan”: Exposing Institutional Racism in Nadifa Mohamed’s The Fortune Men , La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), mars 2025. Consulté le 01/04/2025. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/litterature/litterature-postcoloniale/they-are-blind-to-mahmood-hussein-mattan-exposing-institutional-racism-in-nadifa-mohamed-s-the-fortune-men