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Oromay
On sale
16th January 2025
Price: £20
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
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