Towards Asmara

Set during the Eritrean War for Independence in the late 1980s, Australian Timothy Darcy is a journalist seeking an interview with a high-profile Ethiopian prisoner of war. He travels with a small group from Sudan to Eritrea. The group includes Henry, an American relief worker attempting to get his Ethiopian fiancé out of the region, Christine, a French woman searching for her father (a cameraman filming the war), and Dame Julia, a humanitarian seeking to educate local girls on health issues. Their journey takes them through the heart of the war zone.

“We climbed the last bends and entered, through a stone doorway in the mountainside, the tail end of the trench system. We were in a deep, cool sap. Beneath a roof of logs and earth to show more our right, a wide compartment was crowded with soldiers. As my eyes got used to the dimness, I could see that here yet another class was in progress! Third grade science, Moka said.”

Darcy is the narrator, so this book feels like following a journalist on his assignment. He goes into the historical background of the conflict, the famine that occurred simultaneously, the toll taken on the civilian population, and the factions involved. I do not think it is a stretch to say the typical western reader will learn a lot about this time and place in history. An unnamed editor breaks in occasionally to provide context.

A few of the storylines seem superfluous, such as the situation with Darcy's Australian wife, who has left him and is living with another man. I am unsure how this part is supposed to fit with the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict. Otherwise, it is well-written historical fiction.

3.5 show less

For World Refugee Day I chose not to read a memoir, but rather a novel shows with awful clarity why it is that people have been fleeing from conflict in the Horn of Africa for decades. I have read Towards Asmara, Thomas Keneally's 1989 novel derived from his trip to Eritrea during its war of independence.

According to Stephanie Smee's 2015 biography, Interestingly Enough, The Life Of Tom Keneally, (see my review), the catalyst for the novel was Keneally's meeting with Fessehaie Abraham, a leader of the Eritrean Relief Association in Australia. Abraham had successfully lobbied the ophthalmologist Fred Hollows to run eye treatment programs in Eritrea, and he enlisted Keneally's support in the hope that the author of Schindler's Ark could show more contribute to informing the international community. Because then as now, there were/are wars that gain media attention so that, depending on the media they consume, everyone can have an opinion about them; and there were/are wars that go on for years and years and nobody takes any notice. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the skin colour of the warring parties has something to do with this.

Whatever about that, Keneally, by then in his fifties, and under the protection of Eritrean rebels, set off for an arduous journey to see for himself how the politics of famine impacted on the people. It is this experience that gives the novel its authenticity.

He has woven his tale around a disparate group of travellers, all of whom have an agenda and all of whom have a moral dilemma to navigate. Darcy, troubled by his fractured marriage back in Australia, is a lawyer-turned-journalist whose mission it is to reveal to the world that the Ethiopians are gun-running under the cover of western food-aid. (Sounds familiar, eh? How is it beyond the wit and will of the UN to put a stop to this? No wonder potential donors think their money is wasted.) Henry, an American aid-worker is concerned with matters of the heart closer to the action. His Somalian fiancée is in the hands of the Ethiopians, allegedly under house arrest, and (as we see in the shattering conclusion), he will stop at nothing to get her back. Christine, a troubled young Frenchwoman wants to find her father who deserted the family long ago, to pursue his ambitions as a cinecamera man. He is deluded by his obsession with the Eritrean cause and is living among the rebels to whom he yearns to belong. Finally, (and least convincingly), there is Lady Julia, an upper-class English widow of an old colonialist. She is on a crusade to end FMG (Female Genital Mutilation), but we don't hear much about that.

Nevertheless, Towards Asmara is a very good story.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/06/21/towards-asmara-1989-by-thomas-keneally/ show less

A great read, because i felt i learnt something about a region of the world and a conflict that i barely knew existed.

Found at a cake stall. 1 of 7 books for $5 total!.