Addis Ababa Noir

by Maaza Mengiste (Editor)

Overview

Addis Ababa is a sprawling melting pot of cultures where rich and poor live side by side in relative harmony—until they don't.

Maaza Mengiste’s story “Dust, Ash, Flight” has won the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Short Story, presented by the Mystery Writers of America!

“Several of the 14 stories here, most of them striking and accomplished, involve post-revolution loss, guilt and revenge. Some are surreal—fitting for a culture where, as Mengiste writes in her introduction, ‘there are men who live in the mountains of Ethiopia and can turn into hyenas.'” —Washington Post

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Brand-new stories by: Maaza Mengiste, Adam Reta, Mahtem Shiferraw, Linda Yohannes, Sulaiman Addonia, Meron Hadero, Mikael Awake, Lelissa Girma, Rebecca Fisseha, Solomon Hailemariam, Girma T. Fantaye, Teferi Nigussie Tafa, Hannah Giorgis, and Bewketu Seyoum.

From the introduction by Maaza Mengiste:

"What marks life in Addis Ababa are the starkly different realities coexisting in one place. It’s a growing city taking shape beneath the fraught weight of history, myth, and memory. It is a heady mix. It can also be disorienting, and it is in this space that the stories of Addis Ababa Noir reside . . .

"These are not gentle stories. They cross into forbidden territories and traverse the damaged terrain of the human heart. The characters in these pages are complicated, worthy of our judgment as much as they somehow manage to elude it. The writers have each discovered their own ways to get us to lean in while forcing us to grit our teeth as we draw closer . . .

"Despite the varied and distinct voices in these pages, no single book can contain all of the wonderful, intriguing, vexing complexities of Addis Ababa. But what you will read are stories by some of Ethiopia’s most talented writers living in the country and abroad. Each of them considers the many ways that myth and truth and a country’s dark edges come together to create something wholly original—and unsettling."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617758201
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Series:	Akashic Noir Series
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	623,775
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

MAAZA MENGISTE is a novelist and essayist who was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Creative Capital. Her debut novel, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, was selected by the Guardian as one of the ten best contemporary African books and named one of the best books of 2010 by Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, and other publications. Her work can be found in the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and BBC, among other places. She was a writer on the documentary projects Girl Rising and The Invisible City: Kakuma. Her second novel, The Shadow King, was published in September 2019. She is the editor of Addis Ababa Noir.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I: Past Hauntings

“Kind Stranger” by Meron Hadero (Lideta)

“A Double-Edged Inheritance” by Hannah Giorgis (Shiromeda)

“Ostrich” by Rebecca Fisseha (National Palace)

“Dust, Ash, Flight” by Maaza Mengiste (Mercato)

Part II: Translations of Grief

“Father Bread” by Mikael Awake (Kechené)

“The Blue Shadow” by Mahtem Shiferraw (Yerer Ber)

“A Night in Bela Sefer” by Sulaiman Addonia (Bela Sefer)

Part III: Madness Descends

“Insomnia” by Lelissa Girma (Haya Hulet)

“Of the Poet and the Café” by Girma T. Fantaye (Beherawi Theater)

“Under the Minibus Ceiling” by Bewketu Seyoum (Arat Kilo)

“Of Buns and Howls” by Adam Reta (Addis Ababa West)

Part IV: Police and Thieves

“Kebele ID” by Linda Yohannes (CMC)

“None of Your Business” by Solomon Hailemariam (French Legation)

“Agony of the Congested Heart” by Teferi Nigussie Tafa (Meskel Square)

Editorial Reviews

06/08/2020

Few of the 14 stories in this solid Akashic noir anthology qualify as classic noir, but they all contain many of the classic elements such as desperation, greed, desire, and death. In Meron Hadero’s memorable “Kind Stranger,” the narrator literally trips over a stranger who’s lying on the ground at a construction site. The narrator sits down with the stranger, who proceeds to tell a fraught tale about a woman who rebuked his advances and how he took revenge on her during a time of political turmoil. Another strong entry is Girma T. Fantaye’s “Of the Poet and the Café,” in which a poet sets out to get rid of every copy of his one published book, only to find that it’s not just words that can be erased from the world. Solomon Hailemariam’s pointed “None of Your Business” examines life under a tyrannical regime where a simple school assignment can have dire consequences for one small boy and his family. Each contributor embraces day-to-day life in Ethiopia, and fills each story with a rich sense of time, place, and character. The authors reveal much about a culture unfamiliar to many American readers. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"The 14 stories in the collection give one a snapshot of Ethiopian writers, new and established, and of what they can do. It makes one scramble for more of their work. Mengiste and Akashic have done us a service by putting together this intriguing collection."

New York Journal of Books

"A taut collection of thrilling stories that encompasses modes from the realistic to the uncanny."

Vol. 1 Brooklyn

2020-06-03
Novelist Mengiste presents 14 stories showcasing Ethiopia’s capital at its darkest.

History has not always been kind to Addis Ababa. From 1974 through '87, when the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia, known as the Derg, ruled the country, armed militias kept order at gunpoint. Those brutal days are chronicled in Teferi Nigussie Tafa’s “Agony of the Congested Heart” and editor Mengiste’s “Of Dust and Ash.” Nature plays its own part in human misery. In Mikael Awake’s “Father Bread,” a pack of hyenas decimates a young boy’s family. Cultural practices like female circumcision also take their toll, as Sulaiman Addonia shows in “A Night in Bela Sefer” and Linda Yohannes demonstrates in “Kebele ID,” in which a housemaid compensates for the loss of her pleasure by stealing from her employers. Some misery has otherworldly sources, as in Adam Reta’s “Of Buns and Howls.” But some individuals can be cruel even in the absence of external forces. A survivor of the Derg takes revenge on an unlikely target in Meron Hadero’s “Kind Stranger.” And in “A Double-Edged Inheritance,” Hannah Giorgis presents a college student who avenges her mother’s mistreatment by her father’s family. And of course, people can be their own worst enemies, as in Lelissa Girma’s “Insomnia” and Girma T. Fantaye’s “Of the Poet and the Café.”

A nice variety of bad behavior. East, West: Noir’s best.

Kirkus Reviews

"While most stories told about or set in Africa deny the continent and the nearly 60 countries that constitute it narrative complexity, this anthology works overtime to get specific about the people and problems that define Addis Ababa."

Los Angeles Review of Books

What I found when I wanted to read the next short story in this anthology, was that I had to take a rest. The stories in Addis Ababa Noir are that powerful. The finished story was good. Ergo, I wanted to read the next one.

From the Publisher