The coming-of-age-story of a young Eritrean raised in the slums of Addis Ababa who ends up as a teacher in a small village in post independence Eritrea. His struggle is not to fight for his young nation but to survive the insoluble conflicts of his soul. 200pp, ERITREA. HDRI Publishers.

Under the hot sun, the Jeddah streets make a scene from an old black-and-white movie: the women dressed like long, dark shadows and the men in their light cotton tunics. Naser's friends have all left town for cooler climes but he can't get away: he's an outsider in Saudi and he needs to hold down his job at the local carwash. During his time off, he sits beneath his favourite palm tree, writing to the mother he has left behind in Africa and yearning for the glamorous Egyptian actress he hopes to meet one day. A splash of colour arrives in Naser's world when a small piece of paper is dropped at his feet. It is a love note, from a woman whose face he has never seen and whose voice he has never heard. She tells him that she will wear a pair of pink shoes the next time she passes so that he can pick her out from the other women in their identical black abayas. Erotic tension runs high; Naser and his 'habibati' begin to exchange letters. But in moments of doubt the pink shoes seem to lead him into a cul-de-sac of thwarted desire, fraught with danger. Relationships between unmarried men and women are illegal under the strict Wahhibism of Saudi state rule - and it's not long before their real, but illicit, love must face the hardest test of all. 352pp, UK. VINTAGE.

Three plays by contemporary dramatists: A Village Dream, The Snare and Aster. These plays emerge from a culture that, facing defeat in the middle of its 30-year war for independence, made a conscious, strategic decision to develop a national theatrical tradition. 64pp, ERITREA. HDRI Publishers.

During the Eritrean war for independence the lives of four Westerners travelling to Asmara are irrevocably changed as they bear witness to the devastation of war as well as to the Eritrean's courage and humanity. Map, 320pp, UK. HODDER HEADLINE, 0340528117

Captivating selection of short stories and plays about the Battle of Afabet, which marked the beginning of the end of Ethiopian occupation of Eritrea. Gloss, 223pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS, 1569021694

Focuses on written poetry from roughly the last three decades of the twentieth century. The poems originally appeared in the anthology 'WHO NEEDS A STORY? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre and Arabic' (HDRI Publishers, 2005). That groundbreaking effort is discussed in this critical study, which also includes an extensive analysis of one of Eritrea’s most famous contemporary poets Reesom Haile. 178pp, TANZANIA. MKUKI NA NYOTA PUBLISHERS.