Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood

Winner of the Governor General's Award
A Library Journal Best Book of 2001

Part autobiography and part social history, Nega Mezlekia's Notes from the Hyena's Belly offers an unforgettable portrait of Ethiopia, and of Africa, during the 1970s and '80s, an era of civil war, widespread famine, and mass execution.

"We children lived like the donkey," Mezlekia remembers, "careful not to wander off the beaten trail and end up in the hyena's belly." His memoir sheds light not only on the violence an...