Aida Edemariam enjoyed reading Maaza Mengiste's Beyond the Lion's Gaze. The novel is overall a great job with the only weakness being that there's not much artistic flair. The author"tries to illustrate too much. There are few artistic attempts to describe this period in Ethiopia: those who stayed were hobbled by censorship and legions of informants; those who left, by the exigencies of exile and fear for those left behind – so it's understandable that her characters eventually become ciphers for particular factions, and a microcosm of everything that happened in the first four years of the revolution."
I think the review makes me wanna go grab the book. Thanks Aida.
ENJOY
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The older Ethiopian writer Hama Tuma succeeds much better.Meaza Mengiste's story feels, for Ethiopians, superficial and not magnetic enough to keep you reading though she does write well.
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