Logo image
  • BookDragon
  • About
  • The Blogger
  • Review Policy
  • Smithsonian APAC
 
47211
post-template-default,single,single-post,postid-47211,single-format-standard,stardust-core-1.1,stardust-child-theme-ver-1.0.0,stardust-theme-ver-3.1,ajax_updown_fade,page_not_loaded,smooth_scroll

BookDragon Blog

11 Aug / Addis Ababa Noir edited by Maaza Mengiste [in Shelf Awareness]

Born in Addis Ababa, NEA fellow Maaza Mengiste (The Shadow King) takes readers home to “a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory.” As one of the editors for Akashic Books’ ongoing Noir series, Mengiste gathers “some of Ethiopia’s most talented writers living in the country and abroad” and presents 14 intriguing tales in Addis Ababa Noir.

Vicious revenge looms in three of the collection’s most memorable contributions: an unrequited lover twice betrays the object of his devotion in Meron Hadero’s “Kind Stranger”; a daughter avenges her mother’s attempted murder in Hannah Giorgis’s “A Double-Edged Inheritance”; an abused orphan refuses to be bartered away in Mikael Awake’s “Father Bread.”

Women seeking agency are punished in Sulaiman Addonia’s “A Night in Bela Sefer” and again in Linda Yohannes’s “Kebele ID.” Searching for missing answers from her childhood urges a Toronto woman home to Addis, accompanied by a colleague, in Rebecca Fisseha’s “Ostrich,” while identifying the remains of the disappeared haunts Mengiste’s own “Dust, Ash, Flight,” undoubtedly the collection’s most accomplished story. The dead won’t stay dead in Mahtem Shifferaw’s “The Blue Shadow,” nor in Lelissa Girma’s “Insomnia”; some don’t even seem to exist in Girma T. Fantaye’s “Of the Poet and the Café.” Innocent victims pay dearly in Solomon Hailemariam’s “None of Your Business” and Teferi Nigussie Tafa’s “Agony of the Congested Heart.”

As is often the case with anthologies, quality varies, but the standouts ensure evocative glimpses into a bustling, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual metropolis few in the West will have visited. “These are not gentle stories,” Mengiste warns, but promises “something wholly original – and unsettling.”

Discover: Maaza Mengiste collects 14 ominous, haunting stories set in her birth city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Review: “Fiction,” Shelf Awareness, August 11, 2020

Readers: Adult

Published: 2020

By Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Black/African American, Fiction, Repost, Short Stories Tags > Anthology/Collection, Betrayal, BookDragon, Death, Maaza Mengiste, Murder, Shelf Awareness
No Comment

Post a Comment
Cancel Reply

Smithsonian Institution
Asian Pacific American Center

Capital Gallery, Suite 7065
600 Maryland Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20024

202.633.2691 | APAC@si.edu

Additional contact info

Mailing Address
Capital Gallery
Suite 7065, MRC: 516
P.O. Box 37012
Washington, DC 20013-7012

Fax: 202.633.2699

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

SmithsonianAPA brings Asian Pacific American history, art, and culture to you through innovative museum experiences and digital initiatives.

About BookDragon

Welcome to BookDragon, filled with titles for the diverse reader. BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature. BookDragon is inhabited by Terry Hong.

Learn More

Contact BookDragon

Please email us at SIBookDragon@gmail.com

Follow BookDragon!
  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Looking for Something Else …?

or