Welcome to Litsy!

My dad passed on his love of coffee table books to me, especially the ones about food, homes, and travel. This one beautifully sums up all three.
This is on my to-buy list now! 🥙

This time a Somali chicken stew that was fabuloso! Husband asked for it to be put in regular rotation. #Mtcookbook

Prepping for dinner tonight - Somali stew. The Xawaash spice mix is essential to Somali cuisine, though compared to Ethiopian Berbere ♥️ it has little heat. I‘ll be adjusting to our taste.😋

#Mtcookbook

One of those titles where the apostrophe is key.

A moving memoir of the author's reconnection with her Eritrean family, after international adoption.

The author points out in the afterword that since she wrote the book, Eritrea's political situation has worsened, making her hope to live in Asmara unlikely: but it's clear this was a life changing experience.

The trouble with the dead is that no one will speak ill of them.

All the research into adoptees tracing their birth parents harps on about the fear of repeated rejection. That's rich. For a start it makes it sound like the rejection is all in the adoptee's head. Which it isn't, it's a fact. My family didn't keep me.

The room is suddenly filled with emotion. We are all thinking the same thing: it could just as easily be me standing here with a limp from a bullet in my hip, and Aster standing in my place.

I liked this novella. It describes the ordeals faced by Eritrean ascaris (African conscripts in the Italian colonial army) send to war against Libyan independence fighters in the 1920s. It also questions their willingness to side with the oppressor against the oppressed. I can see however that some readers might not find it to their tastes because 1) the translator is a non-native speaker of English & 2) it's all tell and no show.

@Liz_M

I found The Conscript on scribd. It is about an Eritrean conscript fighting on the Italian side in Libya during the Italo-Senussi war, when both #Eritrea and #Libya were part of the Italian colonial empire (although Libya was trying very hard not to be!) Originally written in Tingrinya in 1927 by Gebreyesus Hailu, an Eritrean author, making it an early African novel, and one not written in a colonial language.

I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join in if you want!

#ABookADay2023