Maaza Mengiste (Canongate Books)
The path to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War was long and tortuous: strewed with treaties, betrayals from proclaimed allies, and self-preservation on the part of the League of Nations member states. This conflict, the subject of Mengiste’s second novel, has its origins in the Scramble and Partition for Africa; in Italy’s defeat at the Battle of Adwa, during the First Italo-Ethiopian War, by Ethiopian forces led by Negus Menelik II; the rise of a fascist Italian government and radicalisation of governors in Italian Somalia and Eritrea; in the Welwel Incident and Abyssinia Crisis; in the forty years of a humiliated and defeated Italy. On 3 October 1935, Italian forces advanced into Ethiopia. Ethiopia declared war.
The novel is centred on Hirut. She is a new addition to Kidane’s household as a maid and attendant to Aster, the mistress of the House. Kidane is an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army who spends his days recruiting and acquiring weapons in preparation for the war to come. He has an interest in Hirut whom his grieving wife, Aster, immediately views as a rival. While Aster exerts her marital frustrations with Kidane on Hirut and the latter’s grief from the loss of her parents hardens into resentment, the enmity between the women seems inscrutable.
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