New in paperback. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement - a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia. Maaza Mengieste's powerful debut tells a gripping story of family and of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. 320pp, UK. VINTAGE.

Again available. Stories of acute sardonic humour which tell of horrors in Ethiopia. Written after the Revolution, introduced by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. x, 192pp, UK. HARCOURT EDUCATION NETQUOTEVAR:HEINEMANN, 0435905902

1993 Paperback

New smaller format edition. Sepha Stephanos owns a newsagent and general store in a rundown Washington, D.C. neighbourhood that is on the verge of gentrification. Seventeen years ago, he fled the Ethiopian revolution after his father was killed. His life now is quiet, he spends his days reading Russian classics, serving the few customers he has and every Thursday evening he meets with his two friends, Joseph and Kenneth, drinking whisky and making jokes about Africa's long line of dictators and revolutions. When a white woman named Judith moves next door with her mixed-race daughter Naomi, Sepha's life seems on the verge of change. His fragile relationship with them gives him a painful glimpse into the life he could have lived and for which he still holds out hope. 228pp, UK. VINTAGE UK.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin sons of a secret union between an Indian nun and a British surgeon at 'Missing' hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother's death in childbirth and their father's disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the brothers come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics - their passion for the same woman - that tears them apart and forces Marion to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as a surgical intern at an underfunded, over-crowded hospital. When the past catches up with him, Marion must trust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him, and the brother who betrayed him. 560pp, UK. CHATTO & WINDUS.

Now available in paperback. Set in 17th century Abyssinia, this is the epic story of a forbidden love between a slave and the daughter of his feudal lord. The novel is steeped in African folklore and teeming with class, religious and ethnic struggles. Map, viii, 238pp, UK. PHOENIX.

From the eighteenth century to the present, travellers, explorers, journalists and reggae musicians have shared a fascination with Abyssinia. So did even earlier writers and mapmakers, who thought Abyssinia was the land of the mythical Prester John. The principal subject of this book is the allure of the exotic, as represented by Abyssinia, to the British imagination, but it also considers the beginnings of anthropology and the variations of quest narrative in modern travel writing. Index, bib, notes, 174pp, USA. STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.

A collection of nine stories painting a vivid picture of the many different lives that intertwine along the Horn of Africa. Map, xi, 102pp, UK. UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO.

Traces and analyses the development of Ethiopian literatures from Ge'ez to the first Amharic novel. RED SEA PRESS.

New in paperback. In Thatcher's London, Lilly, a white Muslim nurse, struggles in a state of invisible exile. As Ethiopian refugees gradually fill the flats of the housing estate where she lives, Lilly tentatively begins to share with them her longing for the home she herself once had in Africa, and her heartbreaking search for her missing lover. Back in Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, the young Lilly, born in the 1950s to British parents, now orphaned and full of religious conviction, finds herself living in the city of Harare. She is drawn to the idealistic young doctor, Aziz, himself an outsider in the community. But then convulsions of a new revolutionary order separate them, sending Lilly to an England, she has never seen, while Aziz disappears. Camilla Gibb's evocation of the distinctive world of the ancient city and of its unique religion and culture is vivid and rich. She draws us just as completely into the mind of the older Lilly, emotionally paralysed by her loss. 408pp, UK. VINTAGE.

Recently reissued. Texts of Amharic verses collected are presented alongside with English translations, so as to make the material accessible to researchers; analysis and interpretation of the texts complete the work. The oral poetry exam-ined is characterised as a literature of protest. In contrast to existing studies on African oral literature which has not always taken peasant consciousness and knowledge into consideration, the commentary focuses on the developmental and functional aspects of folktales, poetry and oral literature. 236 pp, ETHIOPIA. ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY PRESS.