Winner of the Neustadt International Prize for LiteratureFarah's landmark Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship trilogy is comprised by the novels Sweet and Sour Milk , Sardines , and Close Sesame . In this volume, the second of the three, a woman loses her job as editor of the national newspaper and then finds her efforts to instill her daughter with a sense of dignity and independence threatened by an oppressive government and the traditions of conservative Islam.Sardines brilliantly combines a social commentary on life under a dictatorship with a compassionate exploration of African feminist issues.