By CHRISTOPHER DE BELLAIGUE NURUDDIN FARAH, the graying, balding sage of Somali letters, has a literary vision both broad and deep, the vision of an exile and a patriot. Civil conflict has hollowed out the humanity of many of his compatriots, making them unfit to become responsible citizens even if Somalia can be made to function again, but the same calamities have acted on Farah differently, even benignly. Assuming a patriotic duty, he seeks goodness and bravery amid the evil, going willingly into the chamber of horrors that has become Somalia since the fall of Siad Barre's dictatorship in 1991. In a challenge to the clan loyalties tearing Somalia apart, he has vowed to "keep my country alive by writing about it." Farah's early novels about Somalia under the Barre regime were not well received by the authorities, and he was forced into exile. "Secrets," perhaps his best-known work, is a family intrigue dappled by magic, Somali folk tales and explicit scenes of sexual congress and arousal. Unobtrusively set on the eve of the civil war that started in 1991, "Secrets" ends before the catastrophe begins. Like many of his characters, Farah instinctively averts his gaze from the worst of the violence, yet he's always watching for its reflection in the eyes of its perpetrators and victims. Cambara, the tall and striking heroine of Farah's new novel, "Knots," is herself a victim of violence, not of the Somali variety but of the type commonly found behind closed Western doors. Twice married in her adopted Toronto to violent Somali men, Cambara lost her young son when he drowned in a swimming pool while his father enjoyed a "tumble" with his mistress. Now, after almost 20 years of exile, Cambara is back in her home town of Mogadishu, intent on salving her grief - and regaining possession of a family house that has been occupied by a warlord. We have taken a step forward in time from "Links," the prequel to "Knots," which also concerns an exile's return. In the earlier book, Jeebleh, a middle-aged Somali man, arrives home from the United States on a mission to settle personal scores and finds the country divided between two chiefs, characters who correspond to Mohammed Farah Aidid and Mohammed Ali Mahdi, whose ruinous war lasted until the former was killed in 1996. In "Knots," the country is now run by several warlords, and the fundamentalists of the Union of Islamic Courts - the movement that seized much of southern Somalia and was dispersed just a few months ago - are a lurking menace. It is soon clear that Farah's heroine is equal to the formidable tasks she has set herself. "Cambara," he tells us, "is famously admired or feared for confronting problems head-on." A martial arts expert, she karate-kicks herself out of a mugging. When she needs assistance, she befriends a group of pacifist women who help her achieve many goals: to evict the hooligan in her house and the guntoting delinquents in the neighborhood; to stage a play in a city that has forgotten the meaning of artistic culture; to care for two young boys she chances upon and adopts. Anyone who has read "From a Crooked Rib," Farah's acclaimed account of a Somali woman kicking against repressive traditions, is on familiar territory here. Much of "Knots" is about strong women and the feats they can achieve when they are united. The novel is also about contemptible men. With a malice bordering on misandry, Farah dwells on the physical repulsiveness of Zaak, Cambara's first husband. "Men are a dead loss to us," observes one of the women. "They father wars, our miseries." Farah's aggressively feminist tone only softens when Cambara discovers a handful of decent men, characters from "Links." One of them, Bile, she falls in love with. There is a second progression to observe: the exile's return. Farah has lived in India, Europe and South Africa, and only started revisiting Mogadishu in 1996, after two decades away. It may be assumed that much of Cambara's nostalgia, shock and alienation are his own. Cambara and her creator share the tendency of many secular-minded Muslims to blame the malign influence of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries for the rise of Islamism in their own lands. From Pakistan to Turkey, you hear this same argument, which ignores the stubbornly local conditions that allow religious absolutism, whatever its origin, to prosper. It's unfortunate that Farah's writing in "Knots" rarely equals the range and intellectual vigor of his inquiry. The book's finest scene, when Cambara is confirmed in her love as she cares for the seriously ill Bile, is one of disquieting tenderness. But Farah's characterization sometimes appears facile and repetitive; the core of his best work, flickering with magic and menace, seems to have been replaced with a wordy literalness. As a result, Cambara, the book's dominant character, is diminished. Farah's depiction of her as a grieving mother is cursory and unconvincing. Arriving in lethal Mogadishu, "she reminds herself that in a civil war setting, she must attach herself, perforce, to a broader constituency from which she may seek succor in the event of life-threatening complications." Doris Lessing once described Farah as "one of the few African men who write wonderfully about women." In "Knots," we see this only fitfully. 'Men are a dead loss to us,' one of the novel's women observes. 'They father wars, our miseries.' Christopher de Bellaigue is the author of "In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran." His new book of essays, "The Struggle for Iran," will be published in May.