Violet’s story is important, and the dramatic impact of her death upon her sisters, Maggie and Diana, along with her young niece, Grace, is skilfully realised. My main issue with the book arises with Mohamed’s justifiable desire to humanise Lily Volpert (renamed Violet Volacki in the novel) and her family, and to establish a basis of facts from the beginning. The Fortune Men is a good novel, even if it is not perfect. To this end Nadifa Mohamed’s Mattan is an imagined creation, but one based on extensive research into the case, drawing upon Mattan’s own words from the archives, where possible, to give him a voice in this novel. The value of a book like The Fortune Men isn’t to reveal a surprising ending – Mattan’s eventual end seems as inevitable as a Greek tragedy – but to make its readers empathise with the plight of another human being, and in doing so, expose racist tenets through which our systems are degraded. But Mattan’s story is public record and the publisher reveals most of the key elements of the story in the cover blurb.
In 1998, the Court of Appeal called the case against Mattan “seriously flawed”, overturned the conviction and awarded the family compensation.įor those who like their stories revealed in the reading, all this may seem like a big spoiler. Meanwhile, another Somali sailor, Dahir Awalah, had already confessed to being the man the police were looking for before fleeing to Brazil. It would be determined later that an entirely different man, Tahir Gass (also later to be sent to prison for murder), had been seen by Harold Cover outside Volpert’s shop that night. Cover was later sentenced to life imprisonment, himself, for attempting to kill his own daughter in the same manner that Volpert was murdered – a slash across the throat with a razor. He was convicted on the testimony of an unreliable witness, Harold Cover, who said he saw Mattan outside Volpert’s shop on the night of the murder.
The evidence against Mattan was entirely circumstantial. In this case, Mattan became the last man ever hanged in Cardiff on 3 September 1952, only six months after the death of Lily Volpert, the woman he was accused of murdering. There is something compelling about an innocent man condemned to death, and there have been many iterations of the theme. Even if you have never heard of Mahmood Mattan, his story is familiar to you.
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