Featured Interview With Nathan H. Mogos
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Addis Ababa Ethiopia in 1982 from Eritrean parents. Following the border crisis in 1998, I along with my family resettled in Asmara, Eritrea. I completed my BA degree in English SSE at the University of Asmara. Throughout my forced migration over the past decade, I had lived in many African countries before eventually settling in Norway.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I always had this wild imagination growing up. Making up stories, modifying and fantasising the ending of movies was my favourite past time. However, with the intense pressure of my Mother, my imagination went on overdrive once the spell of books took over. What started with Hardy Boys series, went on to serious existential contemplations of Aldous Huxley and Fyodor Dostoyevsky as the challenges of life got harder. After half-hearted years of scribbling my thoughts, at the age of 22, I began depicting the harsh reality around me in short stories in Tigrigna, Amharic, and English. In the past decade, having lived through several countries as a refugee until settling in Norway, my writing became my therapy as well as a career goal to maintain my focus and sanity
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Even though I read books across different genres, I often find myself drawn to those who epitomize the struggle of their times in their in fictive accounts. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Dambudzo Marechera, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, Sebhat Gebregzabher and Knut Hamsun are among the many. For capturing the essence and mentality of their times makes their work timeless and priceless. But my style of writing, which I am constantly experimenting as an apprentice could be the combination of the above mentioned immortal souls I look up to. But I guess I will let the readers decide for themselves
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Watching the news in the comfort of the western world, the coverage of the over packed refugee boats landing in tatters in Lampedusa and the Greek Islands made me feel uncomfortable yet helpless. The polarising narrations on the media fail to capture the deep rooted issues of a continental dilemma of a restless young African generation. The real lives of the people in flight are often blurred by the label “Migrants”. Instead of wincing and cursing on the TV from the comfort of my sofa, figured it was up to myself to portray the authentic story, the face, spirit, and soul of the young Eritreans that make the headline. Having been a migrant, a soldier and a teacher myself, I tried to encapsulate the mentality of the youth in a stagnated state of Eritrea, dubbed by the media ” the North Korea of Africa”. In the novel, you get to meet two brilliant characters with different visions for themselves and their country. With the western dream on the horizon, they try to make sense of their existence while playing hiding and seek from the mandatory open-ended military conscription in the picturesque city of Asmara…
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