Addis Ababa Noir

Addis Ababa Noir showcases a collection of contemporary writing set in Ehiopia. This book is introduced by Maaza Mengiste, who speaks about the diversity of the country’s historical and cultural heritage - 80 languages and more than 200 spoken dialects.

More striking, however, are Mengiste’s references to the political upheaval of the 1970s and the terrible human toll that followed. The events of those years are referenced directly in many of the stories, and even where not, terror and mistrust seem to hang over the life of those featured. Without exception, these are very dark tales.

The collection begins with Past Hauntings, four stories in which the Derg’military junta plays a key part: Kind Stranger (a confession of a betrayal); A Double-Edged Inheritance (the son of a general meets the daughter of a girl he forced into exile); Ostrich (the haunting memory of a body outside the royal palace) and Dust, Ash, Flight (an Argentine photographer witnesses the exhumations of victims that remind him of home).

Part II, Translations of Grief, includes Father Bread (a boy with a fearful past arrives at an orphanage); The Blue Shadow (a boy comes to grips with the death of his mother) and A Night at Bela Sefer (a woman takes revenge for her circumcision).

Part III, Madness Descends, comprises Insomnia (weight of memories denies sleep with fatal results); Of the Poet and the Cafe (a poet finds his cafe has disappeared); Under the Minibus Ceiling (conversations in a private taxi) and Of Buns and Howls (local buns play a mysterious part in events).

The final section Police & Thieves includes Kebele ID (a couple’s maid steals cash), None of your Business (a lesson on the rights guaranteed under the constitution) and Agony of the Congested Heart (an activist is taught about the results of political change).

The writers are mostly Ethiopian expatriates writing in English, so understanding is not particularly complicated by translation, although several authors do throw in local words not readily guessed at. Some of the stories border on the experimental, including elements that not all readers will readily understand.

What struck me primarily, however, was the predominantly bleak perspective, occasionally veering into the spectacularly horrible. Very occasional flashes of what might be regarded as very dark humour do not relieve the mood, which is universally dark and depressing. In a collection titled noir one doesn’t expect sweetness and light of course, but a symphony on one note is hard to take.