God created woman from a crooked rib. No one who tried to straighten it would have to break it. Eighteen-year-old Ebla flees her nomadic camp in the Somali desert when she discovers that her grandfather has arranged a marriage for her to a man decades older than her. Fleeing to a nearby town, Ebla tries to navigate formidable obstacles that prove to be all the more dangerous and threatening because she is a woman. In her lonely search for a solid fortress, she encounters a group of strangers who turn her into a servant or a sex object. As she is tossed from one state of helplessness to the next, she must struggle for an identity in a world where “women are sold like cattle.” Nuruddin Farah’s shocking debut novel, written with total conviction from a woman’s point of view, attacks the traditional values ​​of his people and also serves as a celebration of the unbreakable human spirit. Author of *Ties* and the *Blood in the Sun* trilogy, winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, “Nuruddin Farah is the most important African novelist to emerge during “Over the past twenty-five years, he is considered one of the most cultured pens in modern fiction.” (The New York Times). “Noureddine Farah is one of the best contemporary African novelists.” (Salman Rushdie).