This novel based on real characters, will immerse you in the Ethiopia of the 1980s. With its Eskista beats, coffee ceremonies, friendships and laughter, its mountains and fireside encounters, its loudspeakers in markets and fruit and veg stalls in Piazza. Based on real-life experiences, these are the intertwining stories of Ashebir and Izzie. A boy growing up in the northern highlands and a young English woman finding her feet on the streets of Addis Ababa. Both must embark on a search for who they really are. It is a story of the pain of loss and the power of hope, the deep rupture of separation and the healing of reunion. And the story of a mother and her son in the shadow of the white hyena.
Fra von Massow deftly interweaves her own fictionalized life journey in her first novel, as a young foreigner caught up in the famine-afflicted Ethiopia with that of child shepherd, Ashebir. He and his trader mother are among the millions of villagers forced by “The Hunger” to abandon their rural homes and walk endless miles in search of food. But this story is so much more than a portrait of that epic struggle to survive. The author also paints a vivid, alluring and empathetic picture of the vibrant cultures and lifestyles of both city and countryside dwellers that preceded the famine. And in excruciating detail she portrays the daily grind of the rural women traders, whose backbreaking work provide vital sustenance for their families and are the designated beneficiaries of sales of this novel.
Fra born in 1950’s London lived in Africa during the 1970s-80s. The book carries universal experiences of joy, love, loss and trauma as well as climate change, famine, conflict and war and the incredible bond between friends, neighbours and family, underpinning the will to survive.
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