Beneath the Lion's Gaze

A Novel

By: Maaza Mengiste

Narrated by: Steven Crossley

This memorable, heartbreaking story opens in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution. Yonas kneels in his mother's prayer room, pleading to his god for an end to the violence that has wracked his family and country. His father, Hailu, a prominent doctor, has been ordered to report to jail after helping a victim of state-sanctioned torture to die. And Dawit, Hailu's youngest son, has joined an underground resistance movement---a choice that will lead to more upheaval and bloodshed across a ravaged Ethiopia.

Beneath the Lion's Gaze tells a gripping story of family, of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction before. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution. Emotionally gripping, poetic, and indelibly tragic, Beneath the Lion's Gaze is a transcendent and powerful debut.

©2010 Maaza Mengiste (P)2010 Tantor

Not an easy read

Relevant to present-day Africa and the Middle East, Beneath the Lion’s Gaze is a powerful book that was not easy for me to read. The descriptions of events within the novel were brutal, horrifyingly violent and disturbing vivid. Maaza Mengiste fictionalizes the reality of the last days of Emperor Haile Selassie's despotic rule of Ethiopia and the beginning of the Derg reign of terror following his overthrow. While not easy to read because of its heartbreaking tales of torture and death, the story and suspense was generally quite riveting because it was so excellently written.

The prose was often poetic in its descriptions that sometimes lifted you up in its lyricism and then threw you to the ground with the horror of the events depicted. I am thinking particularly of a scene where one of the monsters of the book, “the colonel,” commits suicide. While perhaps we cheered that the villain was dead, we were jolted by the sudden surprise within the description of the act and the realism of the complexity of the character who acted so abominably out of his own love and loss.

This is a story of contrasts: It is about loyalty and betrayal, power and powerlessness, action and passivity. And, while belief in god is often questioned, there are never any satisfying answers. Why did merciful and compassionate god cause these innocent people to experience the horrors they were forced to endure. How could a doctor whose raison d'etre was saving lives commit euthanasia on a young girl.

Mengiste’s characters are richly described, believable and completely compelling of us to care about each of them. The author has they and we the readers probably wondering if what these people had before was really worse than the aftermath of what overthrew their leaders, the Derg. The horror is mind-boggling. I read this book because it was a selection for a book club.
However, it reminded me of the periods and places in history I have stopped reading about because to the pure personal agony that I felt while reading. For me, though, this was more than just another book. It was an experience that will stay with me for some time to come.

Most of the characters in the book had some kind of religious belief and throughout they question why what is happening to them. In the end, I think that the resolution and reconciliation of the people experiencing this terrible time is summed up in one unbelievable sentence:

“When you are convinced that everything that happens is the will of God, what is there to do but wait until God has mercy?”

They had much more belief than I.

profound narrative beautifully written

The pace, the human drama integrated with the political upheaval, made this a clear window to the Ethiopian revolution.

great story telling

well written story by Maaza.

my only comment on the reader is if the he knew the local words..he mispronounced some of them. otherwise well read!

Authentic

I liked that the novel seemed so authentic with great visuals. You rooted for the family to survive and you empathized with their decisions. I also thought the narrator was excellent.

This story is base on a terrible time in Ethiopia

It is a story of courage and violence. Very hard emotionless to listen to. The story emphasizes that what. We think and do makes an important difference.

Should be fiction not historical fiction

I stopped reading half way through because there was a lot of historically inconsistency and didn’t think the author has done an in-depth research into Ethiopian history. When I got to the part that the emperor was killed by suffocating him with a pillow, a common myth and urban legend that has been debunked long ago. One reads historical novels to try and imagine life and events during that period. The best historical novels tell us accurate histories sometimes weaves into a beautiful plot. This one falls far short from that.