A colleague of mine had recently asked me to write something about my novel, entitled “Evils Days”, a book of fiction that is written in English and published a long time ago. He told me that he read the book recently and found it interesting. I accepted his request and tried to jot down something about this novel in English that only a few devote readers of fiction might remember. Even books written in local languages are not remembered for a long time and the few novels considered to be classics have now lost their luster and might be gathering dust on library shelves.
As a rule, it is difficult to write about one’s book, however the writer loves it or considers it to be his best work. What is more difficult, if not impossible, is the attempt to write or an assessment of one’s work because the writer cannot be the author and the critic of their own work at the same time.
A critic is someone who writes book reviews from an objective point of view and with a perspective to offer the reader with a true and honest evaluation of the work so that students of literature as well as ordinary reader would get a balanced viewpoint as to the merits and/or shortcomings of a given work.
Critics do not write books reviews or appraisals from an exclusively subjective point of view. Reviewing a book critically and objectively is not a matter of loving or not loving a particular work. The reviewer has to make it clear why he is liking or disliking the book and he has to present a detailed analysis of the pertinent work so that the reader or the writer would share his views or benefit from his critical analysis. Writers may have many admirers but they have certainly few critics; although critics might be more useful than admirers.
The main point is that writers should never try to write their opinions or critics of their own works and that if they do they may not do it from an objective, detached or neutral point of view. They cannot play two roles at the same time. They cannot be both writers and commentators or critics of their own imaginations.
The novel “Evil Days” was published in 2000, at a time when political novels were popular because the new European millennium was just dawning and politics was at the centre of daily life not only in Africa but also through the world. In Ethiopia, a new government was established back in 1991and the need to speak out about the past was on the minds of many writers. The past for me or other writers of my generation was a treasure trove of impressions, experiences, and dreams or illusions.
If you ask me what “Evil Days” is all about, I would respond by saying that it is an imaginary, yet realistic portrait of Ethiopian politics between 1974 and 1991 based on the main events of the time. It is roughly the portrait of a family in Addis Ababa that was caught in the maelstroms of events triggered by the 1974 events. It is about the fate or destiny of some of the factors and actors in that historic process as the sufferings they endured and triumphed over those violent and brutal events. I chose not to write an assessment of the book for two main reasons.
First, I am not a critic. Second it would be unethical for me to write about any kind of assessment of the work with the necessary objective. For these reasons, I have omitted saying anything about the plot, setting, characters, or backgrounds of the novel because this would be the task of critics not that of the author. Literary criticism requires not only a wide knowledge of literature but also the art of literary criticism. “Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, end /or evaluation of works of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme, style, setting or historical or political context.”
My intention was to try to recreate, albeit in a fictional form, the stories sufferings, trials and tribulations of some of the members of my generations who were involved in one form or another in the struggles of the time. The events that were portrayed in “Evil Days” are realistic in the sense that they were well-documented by the author who was himself a direct participant in those events.
The main characters are supporters or opponents of the government of the time that was basically a military government that had taken over the leadership of the revolution. There were many young militants from what we called then the political Left who opposed this reality and fight to change it by force. Violence was of course inevitable in such a process and the leading character in particular, who tried to promote a middle ground between two extremes, locked in bloody confrontations.
Although the objective of the leading character in this novel was genuine and lofty, trying to avoid violence and save lives that were unnecessarily lost in both camps, his vision could not be realized because of the atmosphere of fear and revenge that surrounded the politics of that time. However the direct and direct losses suffers by all the direct or indirect participants in those events have inspired the main character to adopt a vision of peace and reconciliation that could lead to the end to the violence and could have channel the revolution into a more constructive direction.
The killings and revenge assassinations had assumed such a horrible dimension that the leading character not only assumed a conciliatory attitude towards the struggle but also adopted a vision of peace and reconciliation as the only alternative that could have saved not only young lives but also the revolution itself that was in the process of committing suicide. Unfortunately, this vision of peace could not materialize in this work as it did not materialize in real life.
It may be time to mention the issue of inspiration at this juncture. What was the author’s main inspiration behind writing this particular novel. Although, the author had written similar works in Amharic, there was no literature available to foreign readers who were eager to know what was going on in the country at that time. Most of the information foreigners receive came from news broadcasts or second hand oral reports or description of events.
Those media reports were either distorted or subjectively skewed depending on the attitudes of the narrators. History was in the making but it was not time to write an objective history of that period because events were fast changing and had not yet crystallizes in order to provide historian with an unbiased perspective on those events. It took many more years for historians to write about that period.
Professor Behiru Zewede, had to step into the academic scene to write an objective history of the revolution in general and that of the accompanying violence in particular. His book about the subject of change in Ethiopian society entitled, “The Quest for Socialist Utopia: The Ethiopian Student Movement, C. 1960-1974”. As an activist in the Ethiopian student movement Professor Behiru had an intimate knowledge of the actors and factors that shaped the movement which he called “socialist utopia” because the movement was basically socialist inspired and socialist oriented as it became clear later on.
Later on, when the political situation relaxed and the repression abetted, there were many writers who have produced books, both in fiction or non-fiction, and used local languages, in Amharic in particular to share their experiences. This author of “Evil Days” has also written an Amharic version of the same story when conditions were permissive. The Amharic title of the book is “Endaidegem” or “Never Again”. The book was a kind of call on readers and the public at large, not to repeat the mistakes of the past, because “those who do not learn from history are likely to repeat it”.
In the final analysis, my novel “Evil Days”, is a call to our collective psyche to free itself from the burdens of our history which was largely marked by conflicts and violence that did not help resolve our deeply-rooted political malaises. In this short article, my aim is, as I stated it above, to share my recollections or my impressions of a historical moment that has shaped or impacted an entire generation. Through this book, I have tried to send the message that violence might not be the final solution to the multiple challenges that history had thrown on our way. I may not be sure whether readers grasped its main message, which is one of rejection of violence and the adoption of another alternative, that of peace and reconciliation.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 18 DECEMBER 2024
