A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature (review)

Fellman, Jack.

Research in African Literatures, Volume 35, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp.

186-187 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

DOI: 10.1353/ral.2004.0060

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ral/summary/v035/35.3fellman.html

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RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITER ATURES

“provided a historical justification of it” (xlv) in two of her novels, but also defends
on the basis of her “writing about miscegenation” against her reputation as “a chief
literary apologist for apartheid and white supremacy” (xxiii).
Braude finds a complement to the “anxiety” represented by Millin in the person
and works of Gordimer, who as a writer committed to the struggle against apartheid
“projected the conflict related to her own Jewish identity onto her fictional charac-
ters” (xxx). This kind of assertion, currently fashionable in many corners of cultural
studies, I find problematic. It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to credibly reduce
divergent, in Gordimer’s case consistently demonstrated, political-philosophical con-
victions to the common denominator of “identity” as this volume strives to do. Braude
is able to make her particular case by failing to distinguish between what an author
says in an essay or interview, via the narrative voice in her novels and stories, and
via her literary characters. Thus no matter whose the voice, Braude finds “pejorative
associations” (xxviii), “derisory representations” (xxix), and all kinds of “concealed”
and “unarticulated” (xxxii) matter related to Jewish identity in Gordimer’s works
(mention of her novel A Sport of Nature is strangely absent both here and in the bibliog-
raphy, though an article about it appears in the latter). Parenthetically, I found rather
quaint Braude’s effort to reveal to us one of Gordimer’s abovementioned offenses by
mistaking for a “child narrator” (xxvii) the narrator’s memory of herself as a child in
the anthologized “My Father Leaves Home.”
Certainly this anthology represents an important contribution to international
readers’ awareness of the significant body of Jewish writing that has long existed
and continues to be written in South Africa. Braude acknowledges that “the literary
features of the selections” (xi) she anthologized were not her particular interest. In
view of this, as well as related aspects to which I have alluded, we can only concur
with her hope that “such focus,” as well as other foci, will “follow, as the still largely
unrecognized body of writing that is South African Jewish literature is increasingly
represented in university libraries and is read and studied” (xi).

—H ELEN FEHERVARY
THE O HIO STATE UNIVERSITY

A Critical Anthology of Ethiopian Literature

BY TADDESSE ADERA AND ALI JIMALE AHMED
Trenton: Red Sea P, n.d. 214 pp.

Ethiopian literature in Ahmaric is one of the most prolific vernacular literatures of

sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, for various reasons, linguistic and nonlinguistic,
few outsiders—including Africanists—know (much of) anything about this ever-
growing corpus of written materials.
The present anthology represents a small attempt and small step in rectifying
this (rather) bleak picture. First, Getatchew Haile provides a fine empathetic review
of traditional Classical Ethiopic Ge’ez literature, which he presents—perhaps sur-
prisingly and unexpectedly—as full of literary merit—this, in contrast to most who
consider this material “purely religious” and/or “merely translational.” The core of
 JACK FELLMAN
187

the anthology then follows, consisting of some half-dozen analyses of selected Am-
haric works. The first two treat Ethiopia’s—and Africa’s—first novel, the 1908 L bb e
Walläd Tarik by Afevork. (I have discussed this work in my note entitled “Ethiopia’s
First Novel” in RAL 22.3 [1991]: 183–84 and will not discuss it further here, except
perhaps to suggest terming the seminal work a “novella” or “historical romance” or
“saga” instead of a “novel.”) The critical essays that follow treat Amharic “novels of
disillusionment,” dealing with, or even predicting, the downfall and collapse of Haile
Sellassie’s feudal-bourgeois Empire and/or Mengistu’s Marxist-socialist regime. From
a purely literary point of view, the best of these novels is Haddis Alämayyähu’s F qr
e
Iska Maqäbar (Love unto the grave) of 1965, a 555-page mammoth work, part one of
a trilogy, which clearly deserves the characterization of a true novel and a realistic,
naturalistic, and psychological work of art. Taye Assefa, perhaps Ethiopia’s most
important literary critic today, does great justice to the work in his analysis. (Sig-
nificantly, an English translation of this work is to appear soon, under the pen of the
fine SOAS éthiopisant and amharisant David Appleyard of the University of London.)
The anthology concludes with discussions of a few works written by Ethiopians in
English, the international language and second foreign language of the State. These
include poetry and drama as well as novels. All in all, the anthology is a welcome ad-
dition to the small set of works dealing with this much neglected and often maligned,
rich and most interesting literary corpus.

—JACK FELLMAN
BAR I LAN UNIVERSITY

African Cultures, Visual Arts and the Museum:

Sights/Sites of Creativity and Conflict
ED. TOBIAS DÖRING
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002.

A special edition of Matatu, the journal of African literary and cultural studies,
African Cultures, Visual Arts and the Museum extends the interdisciplinary scope of
the journal to address the topic of contemporary African art. Editor Tobias Döring
describes the volume as intended to coincide with, and to complement, Documenta
XI, “to map out sites/ sights of creativity and conflict when facing contemporary arts
form Africa” (3). Strengths of the book thus include the geographic and academic
range of the nineteen contributors, among them scholars based in Africa, as well as
lesser-known voices in the field, including literary specialists who ponder the arts as
insightful nonprofessionals. The editor has also made an exemplary effort to expand
the geographic purview of the book beyond the usual suspects of Nigeria and South
Africa, to include research on Eritrea, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Christine Matzke
begins the volume on a strong note, with an historically grounded article on Eritrean
art that offers a much-needed contribution to this neglected area of study, as does
Sunanda Sanyal’s illuminating piece on Ugandan artist Rose Kirumira. Both of these
articles—of women writing about female artists—indicate the laudable gender parity
maintained throughout the volume.