From a Crooked Rib (1970), Farah's first published book, drew its author onto the international literary scene, despite what were considered its aesthetic shortcomings. The book is supposed to have been written in less than a month when Farah was a philosophy student at the University of Chandigarh in India. Perhaps because of its perceived inadequacies it has not received as much critical attention as the later fiction, especially the trilogies. This novel is fundamental, however, in defining the boundaries of the novelistic sub-genre, namely the novel of autonomous personal development or Bildungsroman, which constitutively embodies Farah's worldview. The features which characterise this sub-genre of the novel also define the novel itself. These elements are explored, expanded and sometimes even apparently subverted in Farah's later fiction. This chapter thus attempts to reveal the foundational individualist premise of the realist novel, from which the later modernist and postmodern novels proceed.

The novel takes its title from a Somali proverb: “God created woman from a crooked rib; and anyone who trieth to straighten it, breaketh it.” The reference to origins in the title is echoed in the circumstances of the book's publication. From a Crooked Rib is both Farah's first published novel and the first Somali novel in history.