January 18, 2020 (GMN) - Set during Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, this absorbing novel spotlights the African women who went to war. But Minim has an unexpectedly propitious quality; a close resemblance to Selassie, now in exile in Bath, that can be used to reinvigorate popular confidence that the European colonialists can be defeated. Initially, the reader’s sympathies seem clearly directed: towards the vulnerable Hirut and protective Kidane, and away from the capricious and occasionally malicious Aster. Subsequently, she dons his tunic, jodhpurs, and cape and sets off to war in blazingly described fashion, taking Hirut with her. It was only later that Mengiste discovered that her great-grandmother had taken her father’s gun and gone to war herself.

Source: Ethiopian News January 19, 2020 07:18 UTC