Oromay by Baalu Girma review – long-overdue translation of a modern classic

Communist propaganda in Asmara during Ethiopia’s occupation. Photograph: Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images

This impressive novel, justifiably a modern classic in Ethiopia, was published in the Amharic language in 1983 but has only now been translated into English. The central character, Tsegaye, is a useful idiot (“wagging his tail for the big bosses”) in the military junta that ruled Ethiopia in the 1970s and 80s. The story is set in 1982, when the government launched the Red Star campaign, aimed at crushing the independence movement in Eritrea in the north of the country – or as one leader puts it to Tsegaye, “fighting to cement the survival of a proud and respected socialist Ethiopia”.

In a book not short on action, the focus in the first half is on the internal wranglings of the junta