Yasmine Allas

In 2006, she returned to Hargeisa in northwestern Somalia to take part in a television documentary about her youth.

In 1998, Allas wrote her first novel Idil, A Girl (Idil, een meisje), which was a critical success. She followed that with 2001's The General with Six Fingers (De generaal met de zes vingers). The book was in turn well received by literary critics. It served as a basis for her third novel, The Blue Room (De blauwe kamer), released in 2004. Two years later, Allas launched Uprooted but Still Home (Ontheemd en toch thuis), an essay collection on her own background and beliefs and dealing with Dutch culture. In 2010, she released her fourth novel, the highly acclaimed A Handed-Down History (Een nagelaten verhaal). The story is inspired by her journey back to Somalia in 2006, and was reprinted several times after its initial publication.

At the age of fourteen, she traveled to join her mother's relatives in Saudi Arabia. Allas subsequently moved to Belgium and then the Netherlands in 1987.

Allas began her acting career in the late 1980s in Amsterdam, performing with The Trust theater group. Opposite Jaap Spijkers, she played Gretchen in the company's well-received 1995 production of Faust by the Austrian playwright Gustav Ernst. Allas also worked a number of years as an actress with the Dutch director Theu Boermans. She likewise performed with various ensembles, and had her own solo show.

Allas was born in 1967 in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Her family was wealthy, with her father serving as a General in the Somali army. He was killed in 1977, when she was still a child.