Oromay - Baalu Girma

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Oromay

by
Baalu Girma

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Oromay
Author:	Baalu Girma
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1983 (Eng. 2025)
Length:	396 pages
Original in:	Amharic
Availability:	Oromay - US
	Oromay - UK
	Oromay - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

Amharic title: ኦሮማይ
Translated by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu
Apparently previously translated by John Cunningham (2021)

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Our Assessment:

B : a solid novel

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
Financial Times	.	21/1/2025	David Pilling
The Guardian	.	9/1/2025	Aida Edemariam
The Observer	A-	19/1/2025	John Self
The Spectator	.	11/1/2025	Boyd Tonkin
The Telegraph	A	10/1/2025	Katherine Waters
TLS	.	17/1/2025	Estelle Shirbon

From the Reviews:

"The translation by David DeGusta, a writer and translator, and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, a longtime friend of the Baalu family, unveils an intriguing narrative that wonderfully evokes the energy of time and place. (...) In translation, Oromay is revealed as much more than a historic curiosity if somewhat less than a literary masterpiece. (...) Much of the prose is lively, even luscious, but there are some flat notes." - David Pilling, Financial Times

"Oromay often reads like an 80s-era Bond film, in which 007 is not a secret agent but a journalist on a particularly intense deadline (though the novel also has its fair share of agents and double agents). (...) Language is power, everyone in the novel knows that; the novel is itself an enactment of it. (...) There are linguistic and cultural complexities difficult to convey in translation, but what does come through is how alive this novel is, how urgent its writing." - Aida Edemariam, The Guardian

"This impressive novel, justifiably a modern classic in Ethiopia, was published in the Amharic language in 1983 but has only now been translated into English. (...) (T)he action and horror ramps up, and the cool tone becomes moving and shocking." - John Self, The Guardian

"Despite its perils and terrors, Oromay manages to entertain with a generous measure of twists, reversals and reveals." - Boyd Tonkin, The Spectator

"(T)he English translation of Oromay from the Amharic by David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu can, at times, feel stilted (.....) We’re shown the vulnerabilities that incite a stalwart functionary to treason, given glimpses of what might compel soldiers to sacrifice themselves for their country defending a desolate mountain, and put in the place of the long-suffering civilians who crowd the market on the cusp of the campaign to buy overpriced grain in case of war-induced famine. Girma’s book takes its title from a word in common use in Asmara which means “done, finished, the end, it’s over”." - Katherine Waters, The Telegraph

"The new translation of Oromay, in wonderfully natural English, is the result of a collaboration between Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, a Baalu family friend, and David DeGusta (...) Baalu vividly sketches his characters." - Estelle Shirbon, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Oromay opens in the last days of December, 1981, its main character and the narrator of much of the novel, Tsegaye Hailemaryam, setting out for Asmara the (then provincial-)capital of Eritrea. He is a journalist, but in the Derg- (Provisional Military Administrative Council-)controlled Ethiopia of the time that means he works for the state; he is not a neutral reporter but rather a propagandist -- indeed, when the "Red Star Multi-Faceted Revolutionary Campaign, or the MFRC for short" which this novel chronicles is launched, he is appointed the 'Head of the Red Star Campaign Political and Propaganda Initiatives Section'; as he tells his his fiancée when he sets out, he is now: "a Red Star campaigner".
       At the time, Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia; it only gained independence in 1993, but insurgents had long been fighting the Ethiopian regime. One of the characters provides a brief overview of the then-recent history, noting that as the Ethiopian Revolution unfolded -- leading to Emperor Haile Selassie being deposed, in 1974 -- "the insurgents took advantage of the chaos of that year to seize control of most of Eritrea", so that: "By 1975, the only places in Eritrea still under government control were Asmara and parts of Massawa". Strategically important -- without Eritrea, Ethiopia is a landlocked country, cut off from the Red Sea -- it's unsurprising that, as one character notes: "For four hundred years, there's always been some kind of war going on here". (And it continues, with conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea still regularly flaring up.)
       Mengistu Haile Mariam -- generally referred to in the novel simply as 'Chairman' or 'Comrade Chairman', but also namechecked several times -- ordered the massive Red Star Campaign, with the ambition: "not just to defeat the secessionist insurgency, but to build a socialist society here"; at the very least, if they can not eradicate the insurgency, Mengistu demands that they at least break its back. It is also meant to be an initiative that is more or less completed in three months -- and that's how long Tsegaye expects to be on-site, away from Addis Ababa -- and his fiancée, Roman. (Author Baalu Girma held a position similar to his protagonist's in the Ministry of Information and experienced the Red Star Campaign first-hand; obviously, he draws a great deal here from his personal experiences.)
       Tsegaye sums up:

Our patriotic campaign has two prongs: one hand will wage war against the Eritrean insurgents, the other will rebuild the local economy. My role is critical. I am to design and lead the propaganda effort to build popular support for the Red Star Campaign.

The regime is throwing everything they have into the campaign: as Tsegaye notes when he gets on the plane: "All the important people in Addis are heading to Asmara for the Red Star Campaign", from those who are to report on and chronicle the campaign to "leaders of industry and commerce", as well as all the nation's political leaders. As Tsegaye wryly notes: "Nobody is left in Addis. We better not crash".
Tsegaye immediately sets to work, and is kept very busy. Starting out, he reminds those working under him:

Our slogans reflect our clear and honest approach, and we will act on each and every one of them. Going forward, we all need to be upright and righteous. A socialist public is upright and pure, and demands its writers be the same. From now on, Revolutionary Ethiopia has no place for cynical journalists !

       But, of course, the experience of war can be eye-opening -- and it certainly is then also for Tsegaye when he finds himself on the frontlines. Before that, however, he also is exposed to the planning and intrigues in relatively safe Asmara, with Baalu drawing good portraits of various of the powerful players -- often very dedicated to the cause, but sometimes also with their own agendas. Among the prominent figures is also Silay Berahi, who: "was a key player in the Shabia insurgency who just defected to the government". There's understandable concern over how trustworthy he is or what games he might be playing -- and considerable debate as to how to handle him. (There are also still those whose answer to everything is just to resort to good old fashioned torture.)
       Beyond that, it is clear that there are also infiltrators within the campaign itself: as one person notes: "The insurgents seem to know everything about us: our troop movements, our strengths, our weaknesses, all of it. That means they're here in our midst". As a results, there's a pervasive sense of paranoia -- who can one trust ?
       Complicating matters for Tsegaye is also that he finds himself taken by local Fiammetta Gilay; Oromay is also a love story, with Tsegaye torn between his fiancée and Fiammetta -- both of whom have independent streaks as well. Tsegaye sums up Fiammetta saying: "She's no virgin, she's no saint, but she's not just any woman". She falls deeply in love with him, but it's still complicated, especially with what is unfolding around them. As she notes in a long letter she eventually writes him:

The officials from Addis are the worst: greedy crooks and swindlers, lecherous pigs, arrogant and corrupt. How can the Red Star Campaign not know this?

       Meanwhile, she notes about Tsegaye: "You trust people. You do not suffer from jealousy or stubbornness. Your try to solve everything by talking" . His experiences on the Red Star Campaign, however, show him many of the dark sides of what he had thought was a clear and worthy cause and ideal -- both on the battlefield, with the horrors of war, and especially behind the scenes. Early on he had explained that: "Being a passive observer is not for me. [...] The true meaning of life is to work for a cause". He doesn't come to fully question this particular cause, but what he experiences, culminating in personal tragedy, makes clear that much is not as clear-cut as he (or the Derg) might have hoped.
       Documentary in part -- Baalu includes the full text of the seven resolutions of the (actual) 'Asmara Manifesto', covering nearly five pages, for example --, Oromay is of no little interest as a more-or-less insider account of much of the Red Star Campaign. The love story -- Tsegaye's relationships with both fiery Fiammetta and fiancée Roman -- is also quite well layered into the novel. Baalu writes good scenes, too, with a fiction-writer's instincts -- Oromay isn't merely a journalist's attempt to dress up real-life events as fiction, but rather actually has the feel of a novel. Still, the fact that it is so closely fact-based hems the story in some as well.
       With its real-life insights -- not least the glimpses of Mengistu, but also others from the Derg --, and as a rare example of a work of fiction from Ethiopia from the time of the Derg regime (or, indeed, before or after) available in translation, Oromay is of interest even leaving aside questions of its literary qualities -- but happily it's a solid novel as well. Distinctly a product of it is place and times -- written for an Ethiopian rather than international readership, and published in Ethiopia at the time (if also soon banned and pulled from the shelves ...) --, it nevertheless reads well even more than four decades later. (While it's obvious why this particular work has been made available in translation, how wonderful it would be to see some of Baalu's other fiction .....)

- M.A.Orthofer, 10 May 2025

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Links:

Oromay:

Soho Press publicity page
MacLehose Press publicity page

Reviews:

Baalu Girma:

Baalu Girma Foundation

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of books from and about Africa

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About the Author:

Ethiopian author Baalu Girma (በዓሉ ግርማ) was born in 1939 and vanished in 1984, likely a victim of the Ethiopian regime.

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