Account of the author's eight-year detention by the Derg, allowing insights into the turbulence and brutality of the overthrow of Haile Selassie's regime in 1974. Includes lists of some of the senior figures massacred by the Derg. Translated by Dr. Hailu Araaya. Gloss, apps, diags, b/w photos, 167pp, ETHIOPIA. SHAMA BOOKS.

Abebe Bikila was the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal. He won the marathon running barefoot in Rome in 1960 and won again wearing shoes in Tokyo in 1964, becoming the first person to win the most gruelling of all human contests twice. Born into bitter poverty in rural Ethiopia in 1932, at sixteen Bikila joined the Imperial Guard of the Emperor Haile Selassie. It was there that he came to the notice of the Swedish athletics coach Onni Niskanen, whom Selassie had engaged to try and raise his country's profile through sport. Bikila became the focus of these ambitions - and an unwitting figurehead for African nationalism. 320pp, UK. SERPENT'S TAIL.

A biographical account of the author's harsh childhood on three continents. Birabiro describes her journey from Ethiopia to Italy and finally to the United States, where her relationships with her family become increasingly intense. xvi, 191pp, USA. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS.

Recounts the story of man straddling two worlds, a progressive lawyer and high-ranking official of the government of Emperor Haile Selassie, who struggled for justice within an archaic system. As Attorney General acting to advance progressive ideas in the context of an unrecon-structed feudal society, Bereket was often thwarted, and, after the overthrow of the Emperor in 1974, joined Eritrean Liberation Front. Born in a village outside Asmara, after a few years of elementary education, he begun his lifetime journey of adventure by travelling to Ethiopia, as a thirteen year-old. From there, he went to university in England on a scholarship, just as African agitation for independence was gaining momentum. Involved in anti-colonial student politics as a student, after graduation with a law degree, he was in the thick of Pan-African politics and, at the same time, in clandestine politics within Ethiopia. In December 1958, he attended the All African Peoples Conference convened by Kwame Nkrumah. This was a defining moment for many young Africans and provided young Africans, like Bereket, with the moral and intellectual framework to work towards African liberation. Index, b/w photos, 367pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS.

Now in paperback. When Major-General Gannibal died in 1781 in his eighties, he could look back on a long and successful life. He was the godson of Peter the Great, the Empress Elizabeth had given him nobility, thousands of acres, villages of serfs. His French education and a natural gift for mathematics had led him to fame as a fireworks expert and the building of a string of fortifications from the Arctic Circle to China. Extraordinarily, he was a black African, perhaps from Ethiopia, perhaps from modern Chad, sold as a child into slavery. This biography traces Gannibal's footsteps across three continents restores an extraordinary life to history. Bib, maps, b/w illus, 256pp, UK. PROFILE BOOKS.

Chronicles a unique twentieth century story, the emigration to Ethiopia in the early 1960s of Judy Linder and of her marriage to African musician Abubajer Ashakih. Not simply a personal memoir but also a living picture of a unique time and place in East Africa before it was forever changed by revolution and famine. 303pp, USA. AFRICA WORLD PRESS.

An account of an American family's adventures in Ethiopia during the last years of Haile Selassie's reign. Index, b/w illus, 140pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS.

The life of Abraham Petrovich Hannibal is one of the most spectacular rags-to-riches stories in history, so primary school teacher Frances Somers Cocks decided to find out more about the only African slave ever to reach the rank of general in a white nation's army. She spent several years retracing his footsteps by bus, lorry, boat, camel, train, motorbike and taxi through Africa and the Middle East to Siberia and the Baltic, learning as she travels about the life and times of the African slave-boy who was to become 'The Moor of Peter the Great', and the great-grandfather of Pushkin. Index, bib, gloss, b/w photos, map, 401pp, UK. GOLDHAWK PRESS.

An enduring image of the 1984 Ethiopian famine that shocked the world was that of the young International Red Cross nurse who, surrounded by thousands of starving people and with limited supplies, had the terrible task of choosing which children to feed, knowing that those she turned away might not last the night. She was Claire Bertschinger, and those pictures inspired Live Aid, the biggest relief programme the world had ever seen. Michael Buerk, whose BBC documentary first showed those pictures, persuaded Claire to return to Ethiopia almost twenty years later. For all those years she had been haunted by the memory of the terrible choices she had been forced to make. But when she met them again, the survivors welcomed her back with open arms, and called her Mamma Claire. Col photos, 290pp, UK. DOUBLEDAY. 038565801X

Now in paperback. The author recalls his boyhood in Jijiga, Ethiopia, during the fall of Haile Selassie, and his bold journey to manhood during the rise to power of the communist Junta, whose merciless Red Terror slaughtered 100,000 Ethiopian youths. Part autobiography and part social history, the author portrays a world where the boundaries of credulity are challenged daily. Map, x, 351pp, USA. ST MARTIN'S PRESS, 0312289146

The autobiography of Michael Buerk, the journalist whose broadcasts from Ethiopia during the 1984 famine shocked the world. The author describes why he was drawn to journalism and the impact of reporting from South Africa during the last years of Apartheid, from Buenos Aires at the start of the Falklands War and Ethiopia and Eritrea during the Civil War. Illustrated with colour photographs. Index, 452pp, UK. HUTCHINSON, 0091799678

An account of Sylvia Pankhurst's life between the years 1934-1960 in which she developed a complex relationship with Ethiopia, as she campaigned against Fascism in Europe and Africa. Written by her son, a leading scholar of Ethiopian studies, it illuminates previously obscure parts of her long and productive life in Africa. Index, notes, b/w photos, iv, 270pp, USA. TSEHAI

Now in paperback. An account of the life of George Steer, a South African journalist who reported from Ethiopia, Finland and the Basque country when these nations fought against great powers and lost. Friends with Haile Sellassie, he helped liberate Ethiopia in the first Allied victory of the war, and reported from all over Africa as Fascist forces attempted to gain ground. Index, sources, map, xiii, 283pp, UK. FABER, 0571205682

The author was a political detainee in Ethiopia under the Dergue from 1976 to 1981. This diary is based on his experiences in prison. Index, apps, notes, xxxii, 471pp, ETHIOPIA. ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY, no isbn.

2003 Paperback

Exposition of the autobiographical writings of the sixteenth-century philosopher. Notes, app, 156pp, USA. RED SEA PRESS. 1596022135