The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History: Winner of the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2019

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And so Tsega’s turbulent and at once blissful relationship with Ba’aata begins, which the author dazzlingly portrays. She describes how her father went to study in Canada and there met his wife (Edemariam’s mother), but she does not dwell on her birth, early life in Ethiopia, or departure. Edemariam’s gaze travels from the “silver spears” of eucalyptus leaves to “wobble-humped zebus” and goats “plotting delinquency”.

In this remarkable book that also strikingly nudged my own memory, Aida tells us about Yetemegnu’s ordinary life, which in turn evokes the extraordinary lives of Ethiopian women who lived at a certain moment of history; our mothers and grandmothers whose stories are forgotten in contemporary memory. We first meet Yètèmegnu in the years before the Italian invasion in 1935, as a child of nine betrothed to a cleric more than two decades her senior. Yètèmegnu’s husband, Tsèga, is the central force in her life but he is shadowy, at times brutal, at other times tender, a talented but low-status man trying to climb the ecclesiastical pole. Tewoflos was executed by the military regime in 1974 with 60 other officials of the imperial government. And then there is the absorbing story of the Italian occupation when Yetemegnu takes us to the war and to the prominent personalities of the time such as Ras Kassa, to his son and to his brothers who were executed by Italian fascists, and to Abune Tewoflos who later became the second Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and who was Yetemegnu’s family friend.Along this magnificent and winding journey are many lives and relationships; Yetemegnu’s mother, husband, aunts and uncles, reveal their aspirations and desires. In Edemariam’s case, it is the life of Yetemegnu, who was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar and died five years ago at the grand age of 97 (or thereabouts: the timeline in the book explains that formal birth certificates weren’t used in Ethiopia in the early 20th century). Photograph: 4th Estate/Harper Collins Yetemegnu, subject of Aida Edemariam’s memoir, who lived through the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s. This is a loving portrait of a grandmother, undiminished by the distances between the author and her subject.

The physical world around her too – the look and feel of things, the age-old customs, the seasons around which the book is structured – is invoked with a richness that feels tangible, sensuous: “The dry season wore on… Wild figs darkened in the trees. With a housewife’s view of history, Yètèmegnu witnesses first-hand the changes – in the food market, the rental market, in education, and in attitudes – that herald the end of Selassie’s rule in 1974. It is this complicated relationship between husband and wife that the author recreates in heartening words, in deeply affecting reflections and in meticulously written historical contexts.Edemariam began recording Yetemegnu’s voice 20 years ago and some of her words feature in “direct translation”, so this part of the book might be seen as oral history pinned down in prose. She alludes to a couple of trips back (she now lives in Oxford), but we learn nothing of her possible deracination or her emotional relationship with Ethiopia now. While it was Yetemegnu who told the stories to her granddaughter Aida, in the book it is as though their two voices have merged. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.

So the book is always about Yetemegnu and the capacity for an “ordinary” woman like her to be bold, brave and unconventional within the constraints of her time and place. Certainly, what amazed me most is Aida’s honed and nuanced understanding of her grandmother’s story through her own critical and profound awareness of the tumultuous 20th century history of Ethiopia.That’s what I’m like after reading Aida Edemariam’s enriching book about her grandmother’s long life (1916-2013) in Ethiopia, from child bride to wrinkled great-grandmother. I have started going round saying the name to myself, turning it round in my mouth, with a rolled “r”. But while that phrase occurred to me many times while reading The Wife’s Tale, it is only half the story. Edemariam, a Guardian journalist, elucidates how the invasion was resisted by some and welcomed by others.