Welcome to Litsy!

This is a really hard book to read. Mengiste does not shy away from details of torture tactics used by The Derg, during the civil war. The whole novel is brutal and sad. The audiobook is brilliantly narrated by Steven Crossley. I found it hard to remember names and relationships via audio, I would have bailed in print format. Crossley's voice kept me engaged, even when the plot became a slog or when the cruelty became too much.

Hooray for #bookmail 📬 My pick for March #foodandlit #Ethiopia

So I decided to do this #audiobingo (since I‘m doing this for the year I‘m gonna go back and post the audiobooks I‘ve listen to this year already)

The genre is historical fiction... not one I‘m used to.

#bookishbingo

This was such a heartbreaking book but I‘m so glad to have experienced it. My learning more about different cultures this year (#20for20) has been so enlightening. I‘m glad I have this goal :)

#WinterBookBingo #WinterBingo #Challenge
@Honeybeegirl

Part of my New Year‘s resolutions is to spend each month learning about a new culture/country. This month is Ethiopia. I picked this book to help incorporate this goal. Diving into it tonight on my way home from work.

“Her voice sounded rich and pure, as clean and gentle as spring. It made tears well in his eyes and he swallowed them to quench the dryness in his throat. He continued walking, afraid to reach for the cup in case the momentum hurled him to the ground. The woman brought the water to his mouth and tenderly cupped the back of his head, steadying him for a sip.
“I‘ll walk with you, just open your mouth,” she said.” #maazamengiste

My heart is breaking with this book. I can see the echoes between what happened in my country and what happened in Ethiopia and I feel I understand a little of the pain they‘ve suffered. #ReadAroundTheWorld #Ethiopia

"... (an) enemy and victim all in one night."

#readaroundtheworld #LitsyPassport #Ethiopia

It‘s a dark cold day on this side of the planet, the perfect weather to lie down and read my #ReadAroundTheWorld pick for #May, #Ethiopia, here I come!

#libraryBooks #Ethiopia #authors #writers #books #TBR

🗡💔 The cost of revolution. Reflects the painful cyclical reality that revolutionary forces are often worse than the regime overthrown. I appreciated the author using Amharic words & names. The book is pictured on my injera mat. (Which I have failed to use yet, despite my resolution LAST year.)

My idealbookatoir is an outdoor one, camping next to a mountain stream. I 💜 it!! I sat next to this stream last summer reading about WY. @BarbaraTheBibliophage #idealbookatoir

This is a well-written and gripping book if read as historical FICTION; it‘s a well-written and frightening book when read as HISTORICAL fiction. It is amazing how quickly the machinery of fascism and totalitarianism can get set up by people ostensibly working in the interest of the “people”. Africa usually shakes free of the shackles of colonial powers only to fall prey to dictators backed by those powers. But Ethiopia was a sovereign nation.

Whew. This one was hard to read at points. So disheartening how people get sucked into the fascist machinery of terror. So hard to read about torture and the suffering of the general populace. But it needs to be read.

Nations that condone, teach, and carry out torture disgust me, including my own. How do we let this happen? How do we stop this?

I'm in Macedonia for my poetry reading but Ethiopia for prose. I had a vaguely positive view of Selassie because of Bob Marley and the Rastafarians but I'm far enough into this book to change that view to negative. But with the rear view mirror of history, I know the Derg that replaced him was horrible.