The Wifes Tale: A Personal History

(Paperback)

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WINNER OF THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A CBC BOOK OF THE YEAR

The extraordinary story of an indomitable 95-year-old woman and of the most extraordinary century in Ethiopias history. A new Wild Swans
A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was ten years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition. She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children.

The Wifes Tale is an intimate memoir, both of a life and of a country. In prose steeped in Yetemegnus distinctive voice and point of view, Aida Edemariam retells her grandmothers stories of a childhood surrounded by proud priests and soldiers, of her husbands imprisonment, of her fight for justice all of it played out against an ancient cycle of festivals and the rhythms of the seasons. She introduces us to a rich cast of characters emperors and empresses, scholars and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. And through these encounters she takes us deep into the landscape and culture of this many-layered, often mis-characterised country and the heart of one indomitable woman.

Reviews

The power of Aida Endemariams writing is precisely its ability to reach across the gaping chasm formed by time, alien tradition and unfamiliar mores, connecting up our common humanity Michela Wrong, New Statesman

Extraordinary vivid personal history Edemariam not only brings her grandmother to life but also conveys the complexity of a unique, still strongly religious African culture Andrew Lycett, Literary Review

To read The Wifes Tale is not just to hear about times past and (for a western reader) far away, but to be transported into them Lucy Hughes-Hallett, New Statesman

The Wifes Tale is unique, above all for its brilliant combination of big historical vistas with vivid physical details of life in Ethiopia It is an exceptional biography Richard Holmes

The story of Edemariams grandmother is a sweeping tale of Ethiopias history in the 20th century and a highly personal tribute to one womans life Its wonderful Emerald Street

What brings this narrative flaring to life, though, is not the rigour of its research but its imagination and novelistic tone; Edemariams prose climbs inside Yetemegnus memories to inhabit them and bring her solidly, vividly, to life Arifa Akbar, Observer

Outstanding and unusual memoir The Wifes Tale is told with the turns and twists of a novel, layered with dialogue and stories Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times

The Wifes Tale is a remarkable achievement: meticuliously researched, finely wrought and deeply felt, it is the story of one womans life lived, not so much against the backdrop of history, but in the midst of it Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love

This account of the life of Aida Edemariams grandmother is embellished with the authors fiery imagination and her deep reading about Ethiopias historyIts a book that gets under the skin Ysenda Maxtone Graham, The Times

A window into a world that would otherwise be invisible to us Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone

Author Bio

Aida Edemariam, whose father is Ethiopian and mother Canadian, grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto, and his worked as a journalist in New York, Toronto and London, where she is currently a senior feature writer and editor for the Guardian. She lives in Oxford.