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A Novel
by Mihret Sibhat
Book Reviewed by:A breathtaking, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia's socialist revolution
Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. In the Small Town where they live, nosy women convene around coffee ceremonies multiple times a day, the gossip spreading like wildfire.
As Selam's mother, the powerful and relentlessly dignified Degitu, grows ill, she embraces a persecuted, Pentecostal God and insists her family convert alongside her. The Asmelashes stand solidly in opposition to the times, and Selam grows up seeking revenge on despotic comrades, neighborhood bullies, and a ruthless God. Wise beyond her years yet thoroughly naive, she contends with an inner fury, a profound sadness, and a throbbing, unstoppable pursuit of education, freedom, and love.
Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, The History of a Difficult Child is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.
Only in the book's emotional climax, in which Selam experiences a tragic loss, is there little to no humor, no lightness—only attempts at communicating grief, all the more moving for their childlike bluntness. The question of freedom, and why adults so often relinquish theirs, subtly animates the book. To witness Selam mature over 400 pages, and to catch glimpses of a vast, complex world that extends beyond her perceptions, is a real pleasure. She's pure entertainment...continued
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(Reviewed by Chloe Pfeiffer).
In The History of a Difficult Child, the Asmelash family turns to the radio for news about Ethiopia's revolutionary government, the Derg, which formed in 1974: they listen to reports about the famine in northern Ethiopia, charges by Human Rights International of human rights abuses by Chairman Mengistu, and, as the years pass, updates about progress that guerrilla groups make against the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE; the new name for the Derg beginning in 1987).
Mengistu's PDRE was felled by a combination of separatist guerilla groups, all waging warfare against the government with the goal of independence. One of the most crucial was the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). At the time, Eritrea was a purportedly ...
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Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Secret History of Las Vegas
Mihret Sibhat's The History of a Difficult Child signals the emergence of a major new writing talent. Not only does the novel confront history, masculinity, and gender in refreshing but uncompromising ways, it also has a remarkably original voice, fresh and irreverent. This, combined with the unexpected reimagining of the novel form, her elegant and accessible language, and her deft hand at tragicomedy, ensures Sibhat will soon be one of the most influential voices in the literature of Africa. I am sure this is only the first of many important books that will come from this gifted writer.
