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A journalist finds himself embroiled in a disastrous government campaign as well as a sweeping romance in this landmark English translation of Ethiopia's most famous novel.
An engrossing political thriller and a tale of love and war for readers of John Le Carré and Philip Kerr.
December 1981, Ethiopia. Tsegaye Hailemaryam, a well-known journalist for the state-run media, has just landed in Asmara. He is on assignment as the head of propaganda for the Red Star campaign, a massive effort by the Ethiopian government to end the Eritrean insurgency. There, amid the city's bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents, he juggles the demands of his superiors while trying to reassure his fiancée back home that he's not straying with Asmara's famed beauties.
As Tsegaye falls in love with Asmara—and, in spite of his promises, with dazzling, enigmatic local woman Fiammetta—his misgivings about the campaign grow. Tsegaye confronts the horror of war when he is sent with an elite army unit to attack the insurgents' mountain stronghold. In the aftermath, he encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature.
Oromay became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was swiftly banned for its frank depiction of the regime. The author vanished soon thereafter; the consensus is that he was murdered in retaliation for Oromay. A sweeping and timeless story about power and betrayal in love and war, the novel remains Girma's masterpiece.
"As the tautly written story resolves, failure, death, and disillusionment are its constants...An exemplary anti-war novel from a little-known theater of conflict." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Gripping...Girma's expert plotting reaches a tense and emotional climax when Tsegaye joins the front lines...Readers will have a tough time putting this one down." —Publishers Weekly
"A fast, fluent and often gripping read...From clandestine Le Carré-style intrigue and steamy Fleming-esque trysts to scenes from a battlefield 'hellscape' that nod to Hemmingway." ―The Spectator
"The translation by David DeGusta, a writer and translator, and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, a longtime friend of the Baalu family, unveils an intriguing narrative that wonderfully evokes the energy of time and place." —Financial Times
"Gorgeous physical settings (palm-lined, Italianate art deco Asmara, the wide Red Sea sweep of Massawa beach, the pitiless peaks of the Nakfa mountains); the dark chess games of the cold war; switchbacks and betrayals, hidden loyalties, cross-loyalties and grudges...and always that relentless, tightly plotted pace...Language is power, everyone in the novel knows that; the novel is itself an enactment of it." —The Guardian
"Oromay is an astonishing and compelling tale of revolution and betrayal. It is also the story of Tsegaye—witty, observant, and dedicated—who finds love at the same time as he discovers how dangerous his world really is. Written with breathtaking psychological precision, Baalu Girma's novel is still frighteningly relevant today. Oromay is impossible to put down. As the last book ever written before Baalu Girma disappeared, what you have before you is also an uncompromising testimony to the power of words to outlast regimes. Oromay is a gift to a new generation of readers." —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, finalist for the Booker Prize
"Reading Baalu Girma's novel Oromay sent me back to the time when I first watched the film Casablanca. No, it's not about the similarity of the plot. It's the same surefire set of ingredients that draws you into the story and makes you empathize with the characters. Eritrea in the 1980s, war, junta, coffee shops where local spies and CIA agents drink coffee, a love story ... A gripping novel that has 'documentary' flavor." —Andrey Kurkov, Booker-longlisted author of The Silver Bone
"Oromay is a startling, intimate and gripping saga of war-time Ethiopia turned topsy-turvy. Its cast of quirky characters, as quick to spout revolutionary rhetoric as to deploy cutthroat maneuvers, imbues the narrative with tension, humor and dramatic heft. This fierce but also tender-hearted story unveils a revolution being hollowed out by the hypocrisies, cheap sloganeering and moral fudginess of its ostensible stewards. In his brave dissection of rampaging power and evasive language, Girma recalls George Orwell and Aldous Huxley." —Okey Ndibe, author of Foreign Gods, Inc.
This information about Oromay was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Baalu Girma was one of Ethiopia's greatest writers and Oromay was his most famous novel. He began his career as a journalist in Ethiopia, eventually becoming both a well-known novelist and a top official in the Ministry of Information under the Derg dictatorship. He based Oromay on the real-life Red Star Campaign, a failed government effort to crush the long-running Eritrean insurgency. Its unflattering portrait of the regime caused the book to be banned and Girma to be fired. He vanished on Valentine's Day 1984, likely kidnapped and murdered by the Derg.
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