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The Shadow King
Maaza Mengiste
Novel, 2019
Set during Mussolini's 1935 invasion, it follows women who fight for Ethiopia, drawing on its highland landscape and resistance history.
Books set in Ethiopia
Five books by writers from Ethiopia, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with The Shadow King and Beneath the Lion's Gaze.
About the literature of Ethiopia
Ethiopia's best-known medieval text is the Kebra Nagast, the Glory of Kings, which tells of the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon and their son Menelik. It was written in Ge'ez, which is still the language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Oral storytelling runs alongside the written tradition, and modern novels often turn to the last years of the empire and to the Derg, the military government that ruled from 1974 to 1991.
Daniachew Worku's The Thirteenth Sun, written in English, sets rural tradition and the Church against the modernising elite of the imperial era. Maaza Mengiste's The Shadow King, set during Mussolini's 1935 invasion, follows women who fight for Ethiopia. Nega Mezlekia's The God Who Begat a Jackal draws on oral tradition for a tale of feuding highland kingdoms, and Hama Tuma's The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories satirises bureaucracy under the Derg.
By writers from Ethiopia
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Beneath the Lion's Gaze
Maaza Mengiste
Novel, 2010
A family in Addis Ababa during the last years of Haile Selassie and the Derg revolution, showing the terror and upheaval of 1970s Ethiopia.
The God Who Begat a Jackal
Nega Mezlekia
Novel, 2000
A folkloric novel of feuding highland kingdoms and a warrior woman, steeped in Ethiopian oral tradition and medieval-style politics.
The Thirteenth Sun
Daniachew Worku
Novel, 1973
A novel of Ethiopian society in the imperial era, exposing the tensions between rural tradition, the Church and the modernising elite.
The Case of the Socialist Witchdoctor and Other Stories
Hama Tuma
Short stories, 1993
Satirical stories of Derg-era Ethiopia, capturing the absurdities of bureaucracy, revolution and everyday survival under dictatorship.
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