Gardners
Addis Ababa noir, edited Maaza Mengiste
Addis Ababa noir, edited Maaza Mengiste
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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.
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Beautifully written. The novel really delves into the experiences of those who live within Addis Ababa. I also really enjoyed that each story is linked to a specific town. A very interesting read.
This chapter in the Akashic Noir series takes us to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, a vibrant land of 110 million people, at least five languages, and a vast range of civilization from college-educated families to the poor in their shacks. Whatever you believed of Ethiopia before, the stories below will most likely change your mind.

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