Currently reading
"BENEATH THE LION'S GAZE" tells a story of a family caught up in the full fury of a political revolution that took place in Ethiopia in 1974.
In reading this novel, there were parallels between the overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Both countries on the eve of revolution suffered from failed harvests and simmering internal dissent. In Ethiopia's case, a group of military officers formed a collective known as the Derg and forced Haile Selassie to abdicate.
"BENEATH THE LION'S GAZE" conveys the full force of the reign of terror the Derg imposed on Ethiopia, the courage many Ethiopians showed in organizing a resistance movement (which ended up being brutally suppressed and stamped out by the late 1970s), and reinforced in my mind the corrosive effect bloody revolutions have on every aspect of society within a nation.