Muhammed Said Abdulla was a Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

ist who is often credited as a pioneer of Swahili literature

Swahili literature

Swahili literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the Swahili language particularly by Swahili people of the East African coast and the neighboring islands. It may also refer to literature written by people who write in Swahili language...

.

He was born in Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

. After working for ten years as an inspector

Inspector

Inspector is both a police rank and an administrative position, both used in a number of contexts. However, it is not an equivalent rank in each police force.- Australia :...

 for the Colonial Health Department, Abduall decided to go into journalism; in 1948 he became editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 of the newspaper

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

 Zanzibari. He later became assistant editor of Al-Falaq, Afrika Kwetu, and Al Mahda. From 1958 to his retirement

Retirement

Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...

 in 1968 he served as editor of the agricultural magazine Mkulima. 1958 was also the year that his fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

 work Mzimu wa Watu wa Kale (Shrine of the Ancestors) won top honors at the Swahili Story-Writing Competition (held by the East African Literature Bureau); in 1960 the work was published as a novel.

This novel marked the first appearance of Bwana Msa, a detective

Detective

A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...

 character that features in most of his subsequent works.

Works

Each subsequent book that Abdullah wrote contained a more complex, sophisticated plot than the one that came before it. The plots of Abduallahs novels usually involve a protagonist who must battle ignorance and superstition in order to resolve the conflict.

The usage of Swahili in his novels is celebrated in East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

, even to the point that they are used as required reading in schools. A list of these novels includes:

• Shrine of the Ancestors (Mzimu wa Watu wa Kale), 1960
• The Well of Giningi (Kisiwa cha Giningi), 1968
• In the World There Are People (Duniani Kuna Watu), 1973
• The Secret of the Zero (Siri ya Sifuri), 1974
• One Wife, Three Husbands (Mke Mmoja Wanaume Watatu), 1975
• The Devil's Child Grows Up (Mwana wa Yungi Hulewa), 1976