Deqwan Tiberh review by Ghirmai Negash
(Journal of Eritrean Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, May 2004: University of Asmara)
Forty years have already passed since Beyene Haile wrote his first novel. As extensively discussed elsewhere by the present reviewer, his first novel, Abidu’do Teblewo? (1965), differs from conventional Tigrinya writing, at least, in three fundamental ways.
First, it takes an intellectual-artist as its main character, and tells his story with compelling force and narrative skill. Wounded by life, Mezghebe Amanuel, a young painter-cum-sculptor, uses his art to heal his wounds and of others in a manner that virtually borders on madness.
Two other elements make this book experimental and innovative. One is its narrative structure. In sharp contrast to the literary convention of its day, the book begins with the “end,” and moves forward and backward through flashbacks, images, and repressed and activated memories, as we see the character running about to make sense of his life, which, for him, is synonymous with his work. This particular feature puts it squarely in the experimental modernism of writers like Virginia Woolfe, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Considering that Tigrinya literature at that time was entrenched in the mode of verisimilar linear narrative, this was quite revolutionary. The other significant element in Abidu’do Teblewo? was the introduction of new terms and concepts into Tigrinya, which enriched and extended its idiom. It was through this novel, for example, that words like “art” and “aesthetics” were added to the Tigrinya vocabulary. More interestingly, the novel also taught the readers that for true pleasure, writing had also its price: it required dedication, ability, and hard work.
Though Deqwan Tebereh (2003) is, in a sense, an artistic and intellectual articulation of Abidu’do Teblewo?, it also opens up new thematic frontiers. It is a highly welcome novel, and readers who know
Beyene Haile from his first novel as an original and inquisitive writer have not been disappointed.
Like Abidu’do Teblewo?, Deqwan Tebereh is narrated through the stream-of-consciousness technique. It opens with the monologues of two writers, one dead, and one alive, who takes up the story further. It
also uses the technique of “magic realism” to carry the stories of different characters, some of whom are supernatural beings, who move freely in time and space relating Eritrean history in an epic manner.
It is true that the embeddings of stories within each other, long sentences, dialogues, plays within the text, the endless philosophical and psychological probing, and the many learned allusions create
complexity, at times, making it difficult to understand. But they are part of the larger design of the book and, as one of the characters in the book says, are intended to be taken “like a song the meaning of which you don’t understand but still like” (50).
The main theme of the book is the independence of Eritrea, and the cultural, political, and economic problems that came after. The novel stretches from the time of independence to the present time. Most of the characters are intellectuals and artists from inside and the Diaspora, but there are also ordinary citizens and fighters, who come together to celebrate freedom and reconstruct and build their country.
However, they are divided on the question “how?”. Like all beginners, their perspectives and manner differ in everything they try, and are all the time faced by the questions, “How should we reconstruct the country?”; “How can we help?”; “Which way or model of development to choose?”; “What is the meaning of independence?”; “What does freedom mean, what does it not mean?” etc.
At a deeper level, however, there is a much greater concern and challenge faced by each and every one of them: that of finding themselves before finding answers to the national question. Self-discovery proves extremely difficult though. One of the characters, Dr. Jaber, rightly says that it is the hardest journey with a seemingly endless end:
“These are interesting times in a free country. To all of us, including those who stayed here, there are many things revealed to us or hidden from us as a result of the bitter struggle, or exile or colonization.
You see? Freedom is a heavy burden. It creates pressure, heavy pressure. Whatever has been decided for you by others, individual or collective, it tells you now to decide it by yourself. If you don’t decide, you will know you have decided not to. There is no escaping from that. Time has also played its role. It has either separated our past, present and future lives from each other more, or brought them much closer that they are destroyed or even have faded, losing their particularities. We are moving in circles, in uncertain times” (21).
Or, as one of the narrators puts it, for the character it is as if theyhave found themselves in Samuel Becket’s famous play, Waiting for Godot, where the actors, fixed in time and space, do not seem to know what or who they are waiting for, and who “probably will not know even after the awaited has arrived” (128-129).
The book derives its title Deqwan Tebereh (which means “Tebereh’s Shop”) from the shop that is frequented by the characters. Some of them visit the shop for business; others come casually as the owner befriends them or like the disorderly fashion items are sorted out in the shop. According to the narrator, the shop has something for everyone, but customers are not served in the customary way; they have to search and find what they want without any help from the owner. For those who frequent it, it symbolically stands for Eritrea. Like Eritrea, it has a unique philosophy which sets it apart from all other countries; it does not advertise by saying, “you have everything here” and yet seekers are invited to come to explore whatever they want or can do, like the customers of Tebereh’s shop.
Though populated by a plethora of interesting characters, the book does not have a central character. This role is rather filled by a place-character, “Tebereh’s Shop,” which by attracting many of them
effectively functions as their haven. The characters have different backgrounds and view the philosophy of this unique shop with different eyes. Dr. Jaber, a psychology university professor, and his friend Tsegay, a writer, who having languished in jail under the colonial regime (71) finds solace in the homely, superstitious and lovable lover (Regwad), think highly of Tebereh’s creativity and initiative. Habte is a video cameraman and artist, who returned from the Diaspora after many
years of exile. The first time he enters the shop, he is hastily looking for batteries for his camera, and complains a great deal about the self-help policy of the shop, finding it time-consuming and
impractical. In his typical, speedy and passionate fashion, he is very much immersed in documenting history here and now and roams in Asmara trying to catch everything that is still and moving (people, buildings, objects, things) on camera. Habte has a past, and, though he tries to hide it, it continues to haunt him, at times leading to emotional internal conflicts. In once of his visits to the liberated areas of
Eritrea during the independence struggle, he had fallen passionately in love with Semira, a pretty woman-warrior. When she saw him off to exile, she said to him, “Don’t worry. I will keep you here with me, and you will take me with you” (55, 89, 91). Her words keep on coming to him again and again, but he is unable to make sense of them for too long, which results in his psychological torment. Others who go regularly to “Deqwan Tebereh” for their own private reasons, include Guulay, Tirhas, Abdu and Dr. Amina.
Guulay is a talented artist, who struggles to give meaning to his life. Like Habte, he had spent a great part of his life in exile, and comes to “Tebereh’s Shop” because he is in love with Tirhas, a young
woman-fighter who works in the shop. Abdu is a researcher of economics from California, where he lived an extended student life taking only courses that interested him (65). He is interested in the shop because he is seeking a new theme about sales and marketing strategies for his investigation. At one point, he is engaged in a hot yet useless argument of “us” and “you” with fussy Dr. Amina, a New Yorker, about which city was the best. In addition to these human characters, there is also a unique object-character, a video camera. Permanently switched on by its owner, Habte, it ceaselessly documents every object, event, activity and sound that comes near it.
“Dandish Bar,” located in Asmara, and the military camp of Sawa are two important places which serve as the narrative spaces for the novel. Mostly, freedom fighters and civilian returnees, both of whom, because of the war, have freshly returned and are learning the ways of their new home-city, visit “Dandish Bar.” There is abundant drinking, noise, small and animated talks, laughter and chaos, but above all, the bar serves as an important meeting point for essential and vigorous political discussions regarding the future of the country. The discussants entertain all kinds of options – including extremes – as an ideal political structure for Eritrea. The bar is particularly popular
because of its owner, Dandish, an elderly, Italianate, bubbly figure, who makes one of the liveliest characters of the book. Unlike the freedom fighters, who are preoccupied about their future and that of
their country, and the returnees, who still have to define their station and role in the new nation, Dandish has no worries because, as he says, his two children had returned home safely from the war, and “the one who was abroad had visited.” At the same time, though business is flourishing, he seems yet bothered about the “new” people in his bar “who do not exactly know what apperetivo [in the Italian way] means” (27). In sharp contrast to “Dandish Bar,” Sawa, the legendary Eritrean
military training camp, stands in the novel as a chosen site of Eritrea’s newly invented, important tool of national acculturation. It becomes the practical and symbolic space of purgation for national as
well as individual ills. Thus, it is there, through physical and educational training, that the emotionally wounded and culturally lost former exiles learn how to cope with the realities of their new nvironment. By interacting with the ordinary recruits and their trainers, they build up courage and self-confidence, and are seen gradually shedding off their inbuilt inhibition, fear, and all sorts of feelings of guilt and shame, accumulated through colonialism and life in exile.
Having cured his characters from their internal crises in this way, Beyene Haile henceforth redirects his book into the realm of art, and examines/discusses the characters as intellectuals and artists in
relation to their responsibility in society. And how does the author envisage their role after such a transformation? The issue of the role of the intellectual is pertinent in any society, and it could have been interesting therefore to compare the novelist’s insights with other critical works by prominent scholars (among others Gramsci, 1971; Sartre, 1974; Chomsky, 1987; Said, 1994; Ngugi, 1997; Dhar, 1999) who have extensively written on the subject. But since I cannot go into an examination of that sort in such a brief review, it may well suffice to focus in this piece on the author’s observations only. There are two main categories of intellectuals, according to Beyene Haile. There are those he calls “qelem qemes” (pseudo-intellectuals), and true artists and intellectuals. As he views them lacking in creativity, desire, and capacity to seek the truth, the first group is no more than a poor caricature of itself. His depiction of “true” intellectuals and artists is more interesting. No neatly formulated easy statements are delivered; nor does he delve into any normative discourse explaining what their responsibility should be. Instead, his views on the nature and role of the intellectual/artist are given by exemplification of the vision and actions by the characters that have been transformed into true African intellectuals by passing the trials of personal and socio-cultural crises, within the specific context of contemporary Eritrean society.
We see, thus, Abdu, who had been insipid and unsure of himself, reappear as a reborn, colossal intellectual figure. We see him stipulating and living out the fundamentals of a queerly entitled
philosophical book, Stone Flower [“Embaba Emni”], written by an unmentioned Eritrean writer to raise the aggregated social and cultural awareness of his people. He declares that all the stones and rocky mountains of Eritrea could be sculpted into flourishing state and public buildings, factories, museums, and recreation and cultural centers (see also p. xi) which could be worshipped as functional and artistic artifacts. The dry land and stony valleys could likewise be altered into green and beautiful sites. The core of his principle is that everything is possible, inventiveness and collective good will and
hard work granted.
Similarly, Guulay is portrayed developing his own vision, which he calls the “Forum of Possibilities” [“Medrekh Fitsum Tekh’elotat”], and working together with other countrymen for its success. Like Abdu’s, the latter’s philosophy is predicated by the same semantics about the necessity of creativity, hard work and devotion to one’s community. Towards the end the different characters who act in staged plays and impromptu verbal games are seen exchanging a diversity of opinions about the future of their nation and society, and Eritrea is imaged like the Sphinx that puts difficult riddles or as a Phoenix rising from the ashes, partly as a result of the imaginative power, and dedicated hard work of its artists and intellectuals.
It is interesting to add that Beyene Haile’s interest in this novel is not merely connected to representing the responsibility of the artist/intellectual in society. In his concern for his native Eritrea, he is intimately involved in documenting and understanding the bigger cultural, social and ideological issues of the day, a preoccupation that has engaged virtually all the great writers of Africa. And since
what he observes is incorporated into his fiction with skill and complexity, we can say that in Beyene Haile Eritrea has finally found not only a world class writer, but also a true chronicler and interpreter of its past and current culture and history.
Beyene Haile has made another critical contribution to Eritrean literature by writing this novel. By expanding the thematic frontiers of his book to include truly crucial ideological, political, social,
artistic and intellectual issues, he has upgraded Eritrean creative prose to a robust force of awareness-raising.
Deqwan Tebereh ends with questions the author raises through one of the female characters. Through personification, now, it is actually the country that asks the main questions, which the citizens answer: “How do you see? And what do you see?” The citizens respond knowinglythrough body movements, and humming poetic songs. They seem to think in tandem: “Like all those who first try to self-scrutinize themselves and then cure you through their artistic power, we see you through our hearts and minds, and our dream is to build you. We will do so by providing you with intellectual leadership, injecting a new philosophy of life and art – in the example of Abdu, Guulay and others – in man and society both.” That reads well for Eritrea.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ghirmai Negash is currently assistant director of the Institute for the African Child, African Studies Program, Ohio University, where he teaches African literature and languages. He was the founder-chair of the department of Eritrean Languages and Literature at the Universityof Asmara. He is the author of A History of Tigirnya Literature in Eritrea: The Oral and the Written 1895-1991; Nai Deresti Naznet, mis Kalo't Sine-Tsihufawen Bahlawen Anke'tsat (The Freedom of the Writer, and Other Selected Literary and Cultural Essays); and Who Needs a Story? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre, and Arabic (with C. Cantalupo).
-------------------------------
References
· Chomsky, N. 1987. Chomsky Reader. New York, Pantheon Books.
· Dhar, T. N. 1999. History-Fiction Interface in the Indian English
Novel. New Delhi, Prestige Books.
· Gramsci, A. 1971. The Prison Notebooks: Selections. New York,
International Publishers.
· Ngugi, T. 1997. Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of
Literature and Society. Oxford, James Currey.
· Sartre, P. 1974. Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York, Pantheon
Books.
· Said, E. 1994. Representation of the Intellectual. New York, Vintage
Books.
First, it takes an intellectual-artist as its main character, and tells his story with compelling force and narrative skill. Wounded by life, Mezghebe Amanuel, a young painter-cum-sculptor, uses his art to heal his wounds and of others in a manner that virtually borders on madness.
Two other elements make this book experimental and innovative. One is its narrative structure. In sharp contrast to the literary convention of its day, the book begins with the “end,” and moves forward and backward through flashbacks, images, and repressed and activated memories, as we see the character running about to make sense of his life, which, for him, is synonymous with his work. This particular feature puts it squarely in the experimental modernism of writers like Virginia Woolfe, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Considering that Tigrinya literature at that time was entrenched in the mode of verisimilar linear narrative, this was quite revolutionary. The other significant element in Abidu’do Teblewo? was the introduction of new terms and concepts into Tigrinya, which enriched and extended its idiom. It was through this novel, for example, that words like “art” and “aesthetics” were added to the Tigrinya vocabulary. More interestingly, the novel also taught the readers that for true pleasure, writing had also its price: it required dedication, ability, and hard work.
Though Deqwan Tebereh (2003) is, in a sense, an artistic and intellectual articulation of Abidu’do Teblewo?, it also opens up new thematic frontiers. It is a highly welcome novel, and readers who know
Beyene Haile from his first novel as an original and inquisitive writer have not been disappointed.
Like Abidu’do Teblewo?, Deqwan Tebereh is narrated through the stream-of-consciousness technique. It opens with the monologues of two writers, one dead, and one alive, who takes up the story further. It
also uses the technique of “magic realism” to carry the stories of different characters, some of whom are supernatural beings, who move freely in time and space relating Eritrean history in an epic manner.
It is true that the embeddings of stories within each other, long sentences, dialogues, plays within the text, the endless philosophical and psychological probing, and the many learned allusions create
complexity, at times, making it difficult to understand. But they are part of the larger design of the book and, as one of the characters in the book says, are intended to be taken “like a song the meaning of which you don’t understand but still like” (50).
The main theme of the book is the independence of Eritrea, and the cultural, political, and economic problems that came after. The novel stretches from the time of independence to the present time. Most of the characters are intellectuals and artists from inside and the Diaspora, but there are also ordinary citizens and fighters, who come together to celebrate freedom and reconstruct and build their country.
However, they are divided on the question “how?”. Like all beginners, their perspectives and manner differ in everything they try, and are all the time faced by the questions, “How should we reconstruct the country?”; “How can we help?”; “Which way or model of development to choose?”; “What is the meaning of independence?”; “What does freedom mean, what does it not mean?” etc.
At a deeper level, however, there is a much greater concern and challenge faced by each and every one of them: that of finding themselves before finding answers to the national question. Self-discovery proves extremely difficult though. One of the characters, Dr. Jaber, rightly says that it is the hardest journey with a seemingly endless end:
“These are interesting times in a free country. To all of us, including those who stayed here, there are many things revealed to us or hidden from us as a result of the bitter struggle, or exile or colonization.
You see? Freedom is a heavy burden. It creates pressure, heavy pressure. Whatever has been decided for you by others, individual or collective, it tells you now to decide it by yourself. If you don’t decide, you will know you have decided not to. There is no escaping from that. Time has also played its role. It has either separated our past, present and future lives from each other more, or brought them much closer that they are destroyed or even have faded, losing their particularities. We are moving in circles, in uncertain times” (21).
Or, as one of the narrators puts it, for the character it is as if theyhave found themselves in Samuel Becket’s famous play, Waiting for Godot, where the actors, fixed in time and space, do not seem to know what or who they are waiting for, and who “probably will not know even after the awaited has arrived” (128-129).
The book derives its title Deqwan Tebereh (which means “Tebereh’s Shop”) from the shop that is frequented by the characters. Some of them visit the shop for business; others come casually as the owner befriends them or like the disorderly fashion items are sorted out in the shop. According to the narrator, the shop has something for everyone, but customers are not served in the customary way; they have to search and find what they want without any help from the owner. For those who frequent it, it symbolically stands for Eritrea. Like Eritrea, it has a unique philosophy which sets it apart from all other countries; it does not advertise by saying, “you have everything here” and yet seekers are invited to come to explore whatever they want or can do, like the customers of Tebereh’s shop.
Though populated by a plethora of interesting characters, the book does not have a central character. This role is rather filled by a place-character, “Tebereh’s Shop,” which by attracting many of them
effectively functions as their haven. The characters have different backgrounds and view the philosophy of this unique shop with different eyes. Dr. Jaber, a psychology university professor, and his friend Tsegay, a writer, who having languished in jail under the colonial regime (71) finds solace in the homely, superstitious and lovable lover (Regwad), think highly of Tebereh’s creativity and initiative. Habte is a video cameraman and artist, who returned from the Diaspora after many
years of exile. The first time he enters the shop, he is hastily looking for batteries for his camera, and complains a great deal about the self-help policy of the shop, finding it time-consuming and
impractical. In his typical, speedy and passionate fashion, he is very much immersed in documenting history here and now and roams in Asmara trying to catch everything that is still and moving (people, buildings, objects, things) on camera. Habte has a past, and, though he tries to hide it, it continues to haunt him, at times leading to emotional internal conflicts. In once of his visits to the liberated areas of
Eritrea during the independence struggle, he had fallen passionately in love with Semira, a pretty woman-warrior. When she saw him off to exile, she said to him, “Don’t worry. I will keep you here with me, and you will take me with you” (55, 89, 91). Her words keep on coming to him again and again, but he is unable to make sense of them for too long, which results in his psychological torment. Others who go regularly to “Deqwan Tebereh” for their own private reasons, include Guulay, Tirhas, Abdu and Dr. Amina.
Guulay is a talented artist, who struggles to give meaning to his life. Like Habte, he had spent a great part of his life in exile, and comes to “Tebereh’s Shop” because he is in love with Tirhas, a young
woman-fighter who works in the shop. Abdu is a researcher of economics from California, where he lived an extended student life taking only courses that interested him (65). He is interested in the shop because he is seeking a new theme about sales and marketing strategies for his investigation. At one point, he is engaged in a hot yet useless argument of “us” and “you” with fussy Dr. Amina, a New Yorker, about which city was the best. In addition to these human characters, there is also a unique object-character, a video camera. Permanently switched on by its owner, Habte, it ceaselessly documents every object, event, activity and sound that comes near it.
“Dandish Bar,” located in Asmara, and the military camp of Sawa are two important places which serve as the narrative spaces for the novel. Mostly, freedom fighters and civilian returnees, both of whom, because of the war, have freshly returned and are learning the ways of their new home-city, visit “Dandish Bar.” There is abundant drinking, noise, small and animated talks, laughter and chaos, but above all, the bar serves as an important meeting point for essential and vigorous political discussions regarding the future of the country. The discussants entertain all kinds of options – including extremes – as an ideal political structure for Eritrea. The bar is particularly popular
because of its owner, Dandish, an elderly, Italianate, bubbly figure, who makes one of the liveliest characters of the book. Unlike the freedom fighters, who are preoccupied about their future and that of
their country, and the returnees, who still have to define their station and role in the new nation, Dandish has no worries because, as he says, his two children had returned home safely from the war, and “the one who was abroad had visited.” At the same time, though business is flourishing, he seems yet bothered about the “new” people in his bar “who do not exactly know what apperetivo [in the Italian way] means” (27). In sharp contrast to “Dandish Bar,” Sawa, the legendary Eritrean
military training camp, stands in the novel as a chosen site of Eritrea’s newly invented, important tool of national acculturation. It becomes the practical and symbolic space of purgation for national as
well as individual ills. Thus, it is there, through physical and educational training, that the emotionally wounded and culturally lost former exiles learn how to cope with the realities of their new nvironment. By interacting with the ordinary recruits and their trainers, they build up courage and self-confidence, and are seen gradually shedding off their inbuilt inhibition, fear, and all sorts of feelings of guilt and shame, accumulated through colonialism and life in exile.
Having cured his characters from their internal crises in this way, Beyene Haile henceforth redirects his book into the realm of art, and examines/discusses the characters as intellectuals and artists in
relation to their responsibility in society. And how does the author envisage their role after such a transformation? The issue of the role of the intellectual is pertinent in any society, and it could have been interesting therefore to compare the novelist’s insights with other critical works by prominent scholars (among others Gramsci, 1971; Sartre, 1974; Chomsky, 1987; Said, 1994; Ngugi, 1997; Dhar, 1999) who have extensively written on the subject. But since I cannot go into an examination of that sort in such a brief review, it may well suffice to focus in this piece on the author’s observations only. There are two main categories of intellectuals, according to Beyene Haile. There are those he calls “qelem qemes” (pseudo-intellectuals), and true artists and intellectuals. As he views them lacking in creativity, desire, and capacity to seek the truth, the first group is no more than a poor caricature of itself. His depiction of “true” intellectuals and artists is more interesting. No neatly formulated easy statements are delivered; nor does he delve into any normative discourse explaining what their responsibility should be. Instead, his views on the nature and role of the intellectual/artist are given by exemplification of the vision and actions by the characters that have been transformed into true African intellectuals by passing the trials of personal and socio-cultural crises, within the specific context of contemporary Eritrean society.
We see, thus, Abdu, who had been insipid and unsure of himself, reappear as a reborn, colossal intellectual figure. We see him stipulating and living out the fundamentals of a queerly entitled
philosophical book, Stone Flower [“Embaba Emni”], written by an unmentioned Eritrean writer to raise the aggregated social and cultural awareness of his people. He declares that all the stones and rocky mountains of Eritrea could be sculpted into flourishing state and public buildings, factories, museums, and recreation and cultural centers (see also p. xi) which could be worshipped as functional and artistic artifacts. The dry land and stony valleys could likewise be altered into green and beautiful sites. The core of his principle is that everything is possible, inventiveness and collective good will and
hard work granted.
Similarly, Guulay is portrayed developing his own vision, which he calls the “Forum of Possibilities” [“Medrekh Fitsum Tekh’elotat”], and working together with other countrymen for its success. Like Abdu’s, the latter’s philosophy is predicated by the same semantics about the necessity of creativity, hard work and devotion to one’s community. Towards the end the different characters who act in staged plays and impromptu verbal games are seen exchanging a diversity of opinions about the future of their nation and society, and Eritrea is imaged like the Sphinx that puts difficult riddles or as a Phoenix rising from the ashes, partly as a result of the imaginative power, and dedicated hard work of its artists and intellectuals.
It is interesting to add that Beyene Haile’s interest in this novel is not merely connected to representing the responsibility of the artist/intellectual in society. In his concern for his native Eritrea, he is intimately involved in documenting and understanding the bigger cultural, social and ideological issues of the day, a preoccupation that has engaged virtually all the great writers of Africa. And since
what he observes is incorporated into his fiction with skill and complexity, we can say that in Beyene Haile Eritrea has finally found not only a world class writer, but also a true chronicler and interpreter of its past and current culture and history.
Beyene Haile has made another critical contribution to Eritrean literature by writing this novel. By expanding the thematic frontiers of his book to include truly crucial ideological, political, social,
artistic and intellectual issues, he has upgraded Eritrean creative prose to a robust force of awareness-raising.
Deqwan Tebereh ends with questions the author raises through one of the female characters. Through personification, now, it is actually the country that asks the main questions, which the citizens answer: “How do you see? And what do you see?” The citizens respond knowinglythrough body movements, and humming poetic songs. They seem to think in tandem: “Like all those who first try to self-scrutinize themselves and then cure you through their artistic power, we see you through our hearts and minds, and our dream is to build you. We will do so by providing you with intellectual leadership, injecting a new philosophy of life and art – in the example of Abdu, Guulay and others – in man and society both.” That reads well for Eritrea.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ghirmai Negash is currently assistant director of the Institute for the African Child, African Studies Program, Ohio University, where he teaches African literature and languages. He was the founder-chair of the department of Eritrean Languages and Literature at the Universityof Asmara. He is the author of A History of Tigirnya Literature in Eritrea: The Oral and the Written 1895-1991; Nai Deresti Naznet, mis Kalo't Sine-Tsihufawen Bahlawen Anke'tsat (The Freedom of the Writer, and Other Selected Literary and Cultural Essays); and Who Needs a Story? Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Tigrinya, Tigre, and Arabic (with C. Cantalupo).
-------------------------------
References
· Chomsky, N. 1987. Chomsky Reader. New York, Pantheon Books.
· Dhar, T. N. 1999. History-Fiction Interface in the Indian English
Novel. New Delhi, Prestige Books.
· Gramsci, A. 1971. The Prison Notebooks: Selections. New York,
International Publishers.
· Ngugi, T. 1997. Writers in Politics: A Re-Engagement with Issues of
Literature and Society. Oxford, James Currey.
· Sartre, P. 1974. Between Existentialism and Marxism. New York, Pantheon
Books.
· Said, E. 1994. Representation of the Intellectual. New York, Vintage
Books.