Oromay
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A journalist finds himself embroiled in a disastrous government campaign as well as a sweeping romance in this landmark English translation of Ethiopia’s most famous novel.
An engrossing political thriller and a tale of love and war for readers of John Le Carré and Philip Kerr.
December 1981, Ethiopia. Tsegaye Hailemaryam, a well-known journalist for the state-run media, has just landed in Asmara. He is on assignment as the head of propaganda for the Red Star campaign, a massive effort by the Ethiopian government to end the Eritrean insurgency. There, amid the city’s bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents, he juggles the demands of his superiors while trying to reassure his fiancée back home that he’s not straying with Asmara’s famed beauties.
As Tsegaye falls in love with Asmara—and, in spite of his promises, with dazzling, enigmatic local woman Fiammetta—his misgivings about the campaign grow. Tsegaye confronts the horror of war when he is sent with an elite army unit to attack the insurgents’ mountain stronghold. In the aftermath, he encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature.
Oromay became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was swiftly banned for its frank depiction of the regime. The author vanished soon thereafter; the consensus is that he was murdered in retaliation for Oromay. A sweeping and timeless story about power and betrayal in love and war, the novel remains Girma’s masterpiece.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ethiopian writer Girma, who was born in 1939, makes his English-language debut with this gripping novel, which was originally published in 1983, a year before his disappearance. It's a fictionalized account of the Ethiopian government's anti-insurgent 1982 Red Star Campaign, centered on journalist Tsegaye Hailemaryam, who has just been appointed to lead the campaign's propaganda arm in Asmara. His role gives him access to higher-ups in the Provisional Military Administration Committee, who order him to produce glowing success stories rather than ones with dry facts. The assignment makes him increasingly anxious, and his fiancé grows worried, too, prompting him to ominously tell her, "I'm lost in a jungle called the Red Star Campaign." Meanwhile, Tsegaye has fallen in love with a mysterious local woman named Fiammetta, who seems to know more about the insurgency than she lets on. Girma's expert plotting reaches a tense and emotional climax when Tsegaye joins the front lines: "The carnage overwhelms my mind and my heart is filled with hatred for the vicious enemy." Readers will have a tough time putting this one down.
