Oromay
On sale
16th January 2025
Price: £20
“Astonishing and compelling . . . Impossible to put down” Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
Ethiopia, 1982: After a decade of conflict, the government is determined to quash the Eritrean insurgency once and for all. As head of propaganda, it’s Tsegaye’s job to keep the people onside.
When the Red Star Campaign lands him in Asmara, Tsegaye is swept up in the city’s nightlife, the bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents. But even as Tsegaye begins to fall in love with Asmara ‒ and with bold, dazzling, enigmatic Fiammetta ‒ his misgivings about the campaign grow, and soon his loyalties will be tested to their limit.
Tsegaye is confronted with the horror of war when the army attacks the insurgents’ mountain stronghold, and encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature.
A masterpiece of Ethiopian literature, Oromay is a thrilling political satire and a turbulent tale of love and war. It became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was quickly banned. Baalu Girma vanished in 1984, most likely kidnapped and murdered by the same regime in retaliation for this novel.
Translated from Amharic by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu
Ethiopia, 1982: After a decade of conflict, the government is determined to quash the Eritrean insurgency once and for all. As head of propaganda, it’s Tsegaye’s job to keep the people onside.
When the Red Star Campaign lands him in Asmara, Tsegaye is swept up in the city’s nightlife, the bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents. But even as Tsegaye begins to fall in love with Asmara ‒ and with bold, dazzling, enigmatic Fiammetta ‒ his misgivings about the campaign grow, and soon his loyalties will be tested to their limit.
Tsegaye is confronted with the horror of war when the army attacks the insurgents’ mountain stronghold, and encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature.
A masterpiece of Ethiopian literature, Oromay is a thrilling political satire and a turbulent tale of love and war. It became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was quickly banned. Baalu Girma vanished in 1984, most likely kidnapped and murdered by the same regime in retaliation for this novel.
Translated from Amharic by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu
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Reviews
Ethiopia has spent a hundred years composing extraordinary novels in Amharic, yet virtually none have been translated into English. David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu have provided the world a service by translating Oromay by Baalu Girma, one of the most important novels in Amharic. Banned within days of publication, this thinly veiled roman a clef by a former propagandist about Ethiopian government repression in Eritrea details the roguish main character's increasing disillusionment as he witnesses the bureaucracy of occupation and the horrors of war. In an admirably natural English, this lively translation captures the humor and verve of the original. The translators revel in all the strengths of this dialog-driven war journalism story and its sharp social observations about who sacrifices the most humanity, oppressor or oppressed
Ethiopia has spent a hundred years composing extraordinary novels in Amharic, yet virtually none have been translated into English. David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu have provided the world a service by translating Oromay by Baalu Girma, one of the most important novels in Amharic
A novel widely believed to have cost its author his life, a prayer against war, oppression and the erosion of our humanity. David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu have done an outstanding job translating Oromay, giving the world access to one of the most important and enduring works of literature in Ethiopia
A startling, intimate and gripping saga of war-time Ethiopia turned topsy-turvy. In his brave dissection of rampaging power and evasive language, Girma recalls George Orwell and Aldous Huxley
Reading Oromay sent me back to when I first watched Casablanca. It has the same surefire set of ingredients that draws you into the story and makes you empathise with its characters. Eritrea in the 1980s, war, junta, coffee shops where local spies and CIA agents drink coffee, a love story . . . A gripping novel that has 'documentary' flavour
Oromay is an astonishing and compelling tale of revolution and betrayal. It is also the story of Tsegaye - witty, observant, and dedicated - who finds love at the same time as he discovers how dangerous his world really is. Written with breathtaking psychological precision, Baalu Girma's novel is still frighteningly relevant today. Oromay is impossible to put down. As the last book ever written before Baalu Girma disappeared, what you have before you is also an uncompromising testimony to the power of words to outlast regimes. Oromay is a gift to a new generation of readers