To Asmara

Rating:
Summary: Memorable fiction or merely propoganda?
Review: It is plain from the few reviews posted here that some extreme opinions are held regarding this book. The reviewer who faults Keneally for a one sided picture of the Eretrian war is quite correct that the book is not a balanced account of the long and complex conflict. But then the book is not reportage, it is fiction, and as such - a story told from the point of view of a journalist with no prior knowledege of the war - it is perfectly reasonable. He takes sides and sympathizes with his hosts. He demonizes their enemies. Is this accurate history? No. Is it a great story? Yes.

Keneally is a writter of consumate skill whose characters and settings have a sense of heightened reality. This book, whatever it's factual failings, is vivid, powerful and moving. I knew nothing about the Eretrian conflict myself when I read the novel, and was so moved by it that I was motivated to do a lot of follow up research on the subject. If Keneally meant for the book to be propoganda, then shame on him (though, if so, it is most uncommonly good propoganda). If he didn't, then the accuracy of the book is of issue only to those who have already taken sides and can't appreciate a fiction that takes an opposing point of view. And I really believe that anyone who is moved by this book will at least do, as I did, enough additional study to realize that Keneally's story is only part of the Eretrian story - one that deserves to be known.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable adoration from a Guerilla Groupie
Review: The book blames everyone save the Eritreans who in 1960 were ourselves split in 4 different camps, most vulnerable of which were the highland Christians late to emerge as "liberators" overwhelming the majority Muslims and other minorities.

Kenealy was predictable as a journalist of the age in his inability to report the facts without delving into the adorative fiction one side or the other chose to feed him.

For the uninitiated this passes as Gospel, who after all would doubt the author of "Schindler's List".

Yet his hatred and condemnation of Haile Selassie and later the Marxist(not Stalinist) administration of Mengistu Haile Mariam comes not from the culpability of these two in Eritrea's and Ethiopia's woes but from a singular and unrequitied love Kenealy has for the no less Marxist EPLF that would later Crown Issayas Aferweki, placing him as an Emperor beyond reproach in Asmera Palace.

Such is Kenealy's forgetfulness of his sacred trust as a reporter that the half truths he was fed and reported, now gussied up under the questionable respectability of a book,live not as a signal accomplishment but as a damning written record not of those he points fingers at but of his serious romantic lapses in judgement for the truths of the Kunama, Afar, Akele Guzai, Saho, Muslim, Bilen people of Eritrea he did not write about and that are written in the indelible ink of human suffering.

Idris Awate's(a Hero of the Eritrean Revolution) massacre of the Kunama, a group who Thomas Kenealy's friend Issayas Afewerki continues to kill and imprison is conveniently ignored. The EPLF(later renamed the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice, PFDJ) conduct in mistreating Red Cross, and Amnesty International volunteers, execution of captured Ethiopian Prisoners(documented by eyewitnesses from western Media) remains unmentioned. Kenealy neglects to mention even at the earlier stages, the EPLF's and later Eritrea's stormy relations with Sudan, Djibouti and its own Muslim population. The liberation struggles of the Akele Guzai, Bilen, Saho, Afar and the fight both for suffrage and self determination of Eritreas forgotten Muslim populace are ignored.

These would lead to successive Wars an armed confrontation and low intensity war through EPLF assistance of FRUD, a terrorist Marxist cell in Djibouti, OLF and EPRP terrorist cells within Ethiopia, guerilla warfare against the Eritrean Liberation Front, Kunama Liberation Front and a Confederated Army of Afar Liberation under the leadership of Sultan Ali Mirah.

I was very disappointed in Thomas Kenealy's effort as I had thought his "Schindlers List" was well researched and showed human compassion and fortitude at their best.

I could not understand why his book chose to portray the worst of Eritrea as her best.

Rating:
Summary: About Asmara
Review: Why only 2 and half stars? This is the best book I read this year. From far. I read it twice in a row and was never bored. Can't leave it. The story is beautifull, the way this is written too. I'll give it to my friends.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable adoration from a Guerilla Groupie
Review: Written in a more journalistic style than his later works, this book chronicles a newspaper reporter through his journey into rebel Eritrea before its independence. The reporter, and Keneally, are so smitten with the cause and the people that he cannot see objectively that he is being spoon-fed the revolution very carefully. It does a good job of exposing the Amharic tyranny over other tribes in East Africa, courtesy of Haile Selassie then Mengistu, but it seems a bit dated now that Eritrea has been recognized by the UN and Ethiopia as well. The political manipulation of food as aid still persists, however, and this book dramatizes that situation well, with a bit of Anne Tyler-esque marital dissolution thrown in for "personal growth".