100 books like Ethiopia

This whole series always makes me smile–Mma Ramotswe remains one of the most hilarious main characters in any cozy mystery I’ve ever read. The crimes she comes up against are usually low-key, usually secondary to the backdrop of Botswana, and often solved by accident as much as design.

Precious Ramotswe’s commentary on Botswanan life is simply brilliant, but almost even more amusing is her sidekick, Grace Makutsi, who bumbles through her role as secretary-promoted-to-assistant-detective, and the interaction between the characters never fails to give me laugh-out-loud moments.

This whole series has to be the most feel-good series ever, and now I’m rediscovering it as an audio production of the radio series; it’s as heart-warming as a bright bunch of flowers on a dull day, a bowl of hot soup when you’re sick; a hot bubble bath when it’s snowing outside…I love it, love it, love it!

What William Dalrymple is to India, Philip Marsden is to Ethiopia. They are both inspired travel writers and scholarly historians. What I particularly loved about The Barefoot Emperor was that it actually reads like a page-turning thriller. Central to the story is the towering figure of the Emperor Tewedros, a brilliant military commander, political reformer, and charismatic leader, who was both loved and loathed by the warring factions that made up his kingdom. His rise and fall compare with anything achieved by Julius Ceasar or Genghis Khan, and Marsden captures his incredible, true-life story with bravura writing that leaps off the page. He turns a searing searchlight onto one of the most forgotten episodes in African history and captures it all with a breathtaking sense of spirit of place.        

Leader? Hero? Saint? It’s difficult to find the words to define Haregewoin Teferra, the subject of this book, but somehow I feel these still fall short. A woman living in relative comfort in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, her life is turned upside down when she is given two young children to care for whose parents died due to HIV/AIDS. In time Haregewoin becomes a mother to many more just like them. In opening her doors, Haregewoin opened her heart to hundreds of orphaned children and gave them the chance of new and happy lives. This is a book that moved me to tears. Tears of rage at the injustices in the world and tears of relief that people like Haregewoin still exist.    

Ethiopia is a treasure trove of traditional folktales and learning. Elizabeth Laird has travelled the length and breadth of the country digging them out by talking to tribal elders, community leaders, and traditional storytellers. What emerged for me was a fascinating record of an ancient culture and its wisdom that can trace its roots back to the days of the Old Testament but whose lessons still ring true to this today. I loved accompanying Elizabeth on her travels as she went in search of the stories; enjoyed meeting alongside her the storytellers she managed to track down; and most of all was charmed by the stories themselves, which are a match in wit and human insight for anything that was ever penned by Aesop or Hans Christian Andersen. 

If you haven’t discovered Tahir Shah’s work yet, then this is a great place to start. It is about a quest the writer sets himself to discover the lost Solomon’s Mines in Ethiopia after purchasing an old map in a bazaar in Jerusalem. Shah goes off the beaten track venturing to a cliff-face monastery where the monks pull visitors up on a leather rope, to the ruined castles of Gondar, and to the rock-hewn churches at Lalibela. Most striking of all are his descriptions of an illegal gold mine that he visits where the miners dig with their bare hands. The people he meets, the strange circumstances he finds himself in, and the interesting historical and geographical background he provides all contribute to a rich and compelling account.  

This short book is without doubt the best introduction to African travel (and in my opinion one of the greatest travel books ever written).

Ranging across the whole continent, Kapuscinski’s evocative writing, although not always sticking religiously to factual details, captures the essence—and the magic—of the place like nobody else can. The book, along with his other great works on Africa Another Day of Life and The Emperor, was a major influence on both why I wanted to get to know Africa and how I write about it. 

I admire the way this brilliant Polish journalist has been able to get inside the head of an ancient traveller and show us not only the incredible insights of this peripatetic predecessor, but also what travel really means. “A journey neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our doorstep again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill.” Even more important, he offers one great truth about all writing, but especially history, that there is no truth with a capital T. “The subjective factor, its deforming presence will remain impossible to strain out . . . however evolved our methods, we are never in the presence of unmediated history, but history recounted, history as it appeared to someone, as he or she believes… show more.

Ethiopian society has gone through radical changes and transformations during the last century – and which continue into an uncertain future. The medieval-style empire of Haile Selassie was toppled by a Marxist dictatorship in 1974, which in turn fell to an alliance of northern peoples who set up a federalist system in 1991, which is now showing signs of tension. This collection of sixteen essays by some of the best-known authorities in their fields, outlines the political history and economic changes. It also tells about the arrival of Pentecostal churches, the growth of militant Islam, and the adaptation of the Orthodox church to a changing world. 

David Phillipson is an archeologist who has excavated – and shown me round – sites at Axum and other places. Here he guides us through the early history of the church from the 4th to 15th centuries by showing the wonderful photos, descriptions, and plans of the main church sites, supplemented by historical and geographical essays. A tour of the buildings is a clear and perceptive introduction to this tradition – as well as being a breath-taking journey through some of the more important historic centres of this ancient civilisation.

A savage counterpoint to Pyle’s brave frontline reporting. The English novelist made two trips to the Ethiopia to cover the war launched by Mussolini in 1935. While in Africa, Waugh complained bitterly about a rival reporter who “never set foot in Abyssinia . . . he sits in his hotel describing an entirely imaginary campaign.” And in this satire, he gave savage voice to this incendiary allegation, describing a group of reporters who spent the bulk of their time far from the front, writing stories based on either misleading briefings by local propaganda chiefs or ingenious inventions that fit the prejudices of their editors and proprietors back home. A hilarious romp.