Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood

Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood

Mezlekia, Nega

Paperback

Historical FiguresLiterary FiguresAfrican History

Publisher Price: $25.99

ISBN10: 0312289146
ISBN13: 9780312289140
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: Jan 5 2002
Pages: 368
Weight: 0.95
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English

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 and disorder that beset his native country, but on the rich spiritual and cultural life of Ethiopia itself. Throughout, he portrays the careful divisions in dress, language, and culture between the Muslims and Christians of the Ethiopian landscape. Mezlekia also explores the struggle between western European interests and communist influences that caused the collapse of Ethiopia's social and political structure--and that forced him, at age 18, to join a guerrilla army. Through droughts, floods, imprisonment, and killing sprees at the hands of military juntas, Mezlekia survived, eventually emigrating to Canada. In Notes from the Hyena's Belly he bears witness to a time and place that few Westerners have understood.

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