A Cricklewood author is celebrating after getting his books translated into more than 50 different languages.
Mohammed Umar, who lives in Ivy Road, has children and adults all over the world reading his tales – but is yet to make any money himself.
The 60-year-old’s latest semi-autobiographical tale, The Illegal Immigrant, has been endorsed by friend, neighbour and former London mayor Ken Livingstone as “an amazing book” that “everyone should read”.
Nigerian-born Mr Umar wrote his first book, Amina, while living in a hostel in Moscow in 1991 where he was studying political science.
The tale, which explores the exploitation and degradation of women, has now been published in 33 languages.
His children’s books have been published in 31 languages.
To even get this far has been an uphill struggle for the special needs assistant, who earns his money teaching autistic children in Kentish Town.
He said: “I wrote Amina when I was studying in Moscow. I was bored, sitting alone in my hostel.
“There were no computers back then so for years I only had one hand written manuscript.
“A publisher in the UK said they would do it but when I got here they rejected it. After that I got confused – what was I going to do?
“That was the basis of The Illegal Immigrant. I became an illegal immigrant here from 1992 to 1996.”
In 1993 he met and fell in love with his Dutch wife, with whom he had three children.
In 1996, the year his first son Salim was born, he was appointed Foreign Rights Manager at ZED Books in Islington where he learned a lot about the publishing world and how it operates.
He added: “If you don’t ask the small publishers for money they will publish it for you. I went to political groups. Amina, being about the situation of women, could go into any language. It’s the message in it that publishers were keen to promote.”
The downside, of course, is that he makes very little. “The Sanskrit editions sell for 60 rupees – that’s probably 30p. How many must they sell for me to make money? And then there are the taxes.
“At the moment, money is not my motivation – my books are being read. The day I became an illegal immigrant I decided that one day I would write about it.
“I let everything settle down first. Most illegal immigrants would rather forget their experience but me, I felt I had to confront it. This is how people live.”
Languages in which Mohammed Umar’s books are published
Acholi
Afrikaans
Arabic
Azeri
Bahasa
English
Farsi
Finnish
French
Fulfulde
Greek
Hausa
Hindi
Igbo
Japanese
Kannada
Kanuri
Khandeshi
Kinyarwanda
Kirundi
Luganda
Macedonian
Maithili
Malay
Malayalam
Marathi
Mongolian
Ndebele
Nepali
Oriya
Polish
Punjabi
Rajasthani
Sanskrit
Santali
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhala
Somali
Spanish
Swahili
Tamil
Telugu
Urdu
Vietnamese
Xhosa
Yoruba
Zulu
Languages in which Mohammed Umar’s books are in production
Albanian
Amharic
Bengoli
Burmese
Chichewa
Kashmiri
Montenegrin
Oromo
Sepedi
Setswana
Siswati
Thai
Thivenda
Tigrinya
Tumbuka
Uzbek
Xitsonga
Yao
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