Scarred by decades of conflict and occupation, the craggy African nation of Eritrea has weathered the world's longest-running guerrilla war. The dogged determination that secured victory against Ethiopia, its giant neighbor, is woven into the national psyche, the product of cynical foreign interventions. Fascist Italy wanted Eritrea as the springboard for a new, racially pure Roman empire; Britain sold off its industry for scrap; the United States needed a base for its state-of-the-art spy station; and the Soviet Union used it as a pawn in a proxy war.

In "I Didn't Do It for You", Michela Wrong reveals the breathtaking abuses this tiny nation has suffered and, with a sharp eye for detail and a taste for the incongruous, tells the story of colonialism itself and how international power politics can play havoc with a country's destiny.

I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation

The most secretive, repressive state in Africa is hemorrhaging its citizens. In some months as many Eritreans as Syrians arrive on European shores, yet the country is not convulsed by civil war. Young men and women risk all to escape. Many do not survive - their bones littering the Sahara; their bodies floating in the Mediterranean.

Still they flee, to avoid permanent military service and a future without hope. As the United Nations reported: 'Thousands of conscripts are subjected to forced labor that effectively abuses, exploits and enslaves them for years.'

Eritreans fought for their freedom from Ethiopia for thirty years, only to have their revered leader turn on his own people. Independent since 1993, the country has no constitution and no parliament. No budget has ever been published. Elections have never been held and opponents languish in jail. International organizations find it next to impossible to work in the country.

Nor is it just a domestic issue. By supporting armed insurrection in neighboring states it has destabilized the Horn of Africa. Eritrea is involved in the Yemeni civil war, while the regime backs rebel movements in Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

This book tells the untold story of how this tiny nation became a world pariah.


Understanding Eritrea: Inside Africa's Most Repressive State

Eritrea at a Crossroads : A Narrative of Triumph, Betrayal and Hope

Robert D. Kaplan is one of our leading international journalists, someone who can explain the most complicated and volatile regions and show why they’re relevant to our world. In Surrender or Starve, Kaplan illuminates the fault lines in the Horn of Africa, which is emerging as a crucial region for America’s ongoing war on terrorism. 

Reporting from Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Eritrea, Kaplan examines the factors behind the famine that ravaged the region in the 1980s, exploring the ethnic, religious, and class conflicts that are crucial for understanding the region today. He offers a new foreword and afterword that show how the nations have developed since the famine, and why this region will only grow more important to the United States. Wielding his trademark ability to blend on-the-ground reporting and cogent analysis, Robert D. Kaplan introduces us to a fascinating part of the world, one that it would behoove all of us to know more about.

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Asmara is the capital of Eritrea - a surreally Italian city at the centre of an ex-Italian colony that has been at war with its neighbour, Ethiopia (who claims sovereignty over Eritrea), for over ten years. Amidst broken palaces (built by the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie), nomadic desert encampments and war-torn towns, Justin Hill found a god-fearing people remarkably resistant to everything fate has thrown at them. This book is a tribute to their resilience.

Ciao Asmara

"Our bodies started shaking from the cold and shock, yet we were so terrified of being caught that we had to keep our teeth clenched together to keep them from chattering; we could not allow ourselves to make any sound. Whenever we heard a sound or detected motion, we would stare in that direction, even though we could see nothing but dark." Dawit Gebremichael Habte fled his homeland of Eritrea as a teenager. In the midst of the ongoing Eritrean-Ethiopian war, Dawit and his sisters crossed illegally into Kenya. Without their parents or documents to help their passage, they experienced the abuse and neglect known by so many refugees around the world. 
 But Dawit refused to give up. He stayed resilient and positive. Journeying to the United States under asylum and still a boy Dawit found a new purpose in an unfamiliar land. Against impossible odds, he studied hard and was accepted to Johns Hopkins University, eventually landing a job as a software engineer at Bloomberg. After a few years, with the support of Michael Bloomberg himself, Dawit returned to his homeland to offer business opportunities for other Eritreans. Dawit found a way to help his ancestral land emerge from thirty years of debilitating war. 
"Gratitude in Low Voices" is about how one man was marginalized, but how compassion and love never abandoned him. It s about learning how to care for family, and how to honor those who help the helpless. The life of a refugee is hard, and the lives of those in war-torn lands are harder still. This account reminds us that hope is not lost. 
 This humble story of Dawit s life stands out in a time when we look at immigrants as never before a book that illuminates our decisions to help or to turn away those who land on our doorstep, and the gratitude that surely follows any act of compassion."

Gratitude in Low Voices: A Memoir

There are some places that hound the imagination of a traveler years before they actually have the opportunity to visit. The ancient lands of Eritrea and Ethiopia beckoned to author Julia Stewart.Breathtaking landscapes, attractive citizens, a gentle culture and rich history, intricately spiced foods-it was all waiting for her. All of these things, Ms. Stewart came to experience and appreciate with abundance. What she did not predict were several mysterious happenings: coming face to face with abject poverty, harassment at the hands of "union busters, " and her own reactions to these unpredictable events.

Ms. Stewart's travels to Eritrea and Ethiopia are of a current vintage, unlike those of such famous explorers of an earlier period as the Scot, James Bruce. Her travels were during the post-war era when tremendous changes occurred in the political and social lives of the people there.

Stewart faced many surprises, good and bad, and she shares all of them with her readers. Despite a sometimes-arduous adventure, Stewart's fascination for Eritrea and Ethiopia has not ceased.

Eccentric Graces: Eritrea and Ethiopia Through the Eyes of a Traveler

Written by experts with extensive first-hand knowledge of the city's architectural heritage, this is the first book to be published on the architecture of Asmara. It contains new photography and an extraordinary range of previously unpublished archival material, including original plans and drawings.

Asmara: Africa's Secret Modernist City

Ethiopia and Eritrea are home to Africa's oldest written historical tradition, which began in the third century with the monuments and manuscripts of Aksum and has continued to the present day. This study explores the development of this rich tradition, focusing in particular on the dramatic lives and original thought of a group of early twentieth-century Ethiopian and Eritrean historians. James De Lorenzi examines how these scholars used historiography to not only record the past but also grapple with the changes of the modern era. Through their history writings, they made provocative political claims, explored the nature of their communal ties, assessed their inherited institutions and ideas, and critically evaluated the people and cultures of the wider world. Opposing the view that historiography is a uniquely Western intellectual pursuit, Guardians of the Tradition provides new evidence of an African historical consciousness and the vibrancy of history writing outside the West. James De Lorenzi is associate professor of history at John Jay College, City University of New York.

Guardians of the Tradition: Historians and Historical Writing in Ethiopia and Eritrea

To recover North Africa from the Nazis, the Allies had to undertake the largest salvage operation the world had ever seen

By 1942, Mussolini’s forces were on the run in East Africa. In order to slow the Allied advance, the Italians used audacious tactics. One included making ports inoperable, leaving the Allies without the infrastructure necessary to continue the war effort. At Massawa, Eritrea, the fleeing Italians left the largest mass wreck in the world, turning a vital port into a tangle of shattered ships, cranes, and sunken dry docks. In order to continue the war effort and push back the Axis powers in Africa, the Allies enlisted famed naval salvage expert Commander Edward Ellsberg.
 
Ellsberg, a veteran miracle worker in raising sunken ships, was given his toughest assignment yet: He had to get the port open again with no budget, no men, and no tools. The British had claimed the task was impossible—Massawa couldn’t be cleared. "Under the Red Sea Sun" is Ellsberg’s account of his work in the searing heat of Eritrea. Ellsberg navigates complicated American and British bureaucracies to build a ragtag group of international civilians and accomplish what was called “the Miracle of Massawa.”


Under the Red Sea Sun

This book is a fact-finding mission to Eritrea during the 24th year of the war

Never Kneel Down: Drought, Development, and Liberation in Eritrea

This national bestseller by the highly-acclaimed author of "Schindler's List" tells the deeply moving and spellbinding story of an alienated Australian journalist's soul-searching journey across a war-torn Africa.

To Asmara

The Dynamics of an Unfinished African Dream: Eritrea: Ancient History to 1968

From a childhood survivor of the Camdodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners

In Eritrea, state, traditional, and religious laws equally prevail, but any of these legal systems may be put into play depending upon the individual or individuals involved in a legal dispute. Because of conflicting laws, it has been difficult for Eritreans to come to a consensus on what constitutes their legal system. In Blood, Land, and Sex, Lyda Favali and Roy Pateman examine the roles of the state, ethnic groups, religious groups, and the international community in several key areas of Eritrean law--blood feud or murder, land tenure, gender relations (marriage, prostitution, rape), and female genital surgery. Favali and Pateman explore the intersections of the various laws and discuss how change can be brought to communities where legal ambiguity prevails, often to the grave harm of women and other powerless individuals. This significant book focuses on how Eritrea and other newly emerging democracies might build pluralist legal systems that will be acceptable to an ethnically and religiously diverse population.

Blood, Land, and Sex: Legal and Political Pluralism in Eritrea

Eritrea, the newest nation-state in Africa, gained independence from the Ethiopian state after a prolonged and bitter conflict. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the country's political history over the past three decades. It examines the origins of Eritrean nationalism, and charts the development of its various nationalist movements, assessing the programs and capabilities of the parties contending for power. It also analyzes the regional and international context within which the battles for independence were fought.

The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941-1993

Ethiopia, a country of ancient origins in eastern Africa, remains a military powerhouse of that continent until our days. Nowadays involved in the war in neighboring Somalia, Ethiopia was also involved in half a dozen of other armed conflicts over the last 60 years. Crucial between these was the Eritrean War of Independence. Fought 1961-1991, this was one of biggest armed conflicts on the African continent, especially if measured by numbers of involved combatants. It included a wide spectrum of operations, from 'classic' counterinsurgency (COIN) to conventional warfare in mountains - with the latter being one of the most complex and most demanding undertakings possible to conduct by a military force. Campaigns run during the Eritrean War of Independence often included large formations of relatively well-equipped forces, led by well-trained commanders, along well-thought-out plans, based on homegrown doctrine. The air power played a crucial - although not necessarily decisive - role in many of battles. Nevertheless, most of details about this conflict remain unknown in the wider public. Similarly, relatively few Western observers are aware of relations between the Eritrean liberation movements, and various dissident and insurgent movements inside Ethiopia - although the synergy of these eventually led the downfall of the so-called Derg government, in 1991. While the first volume in this mini-series spanned the history of wars between Ethiopia and Eritrea between 1961 and 1988, the second covers the period since. Correspondingly, it is providing coverage of military operations that led to the fall of the Derg government in Ethiopia of 1991, the period of Eritrean military buildup and a complete reorganization of the Ethiopian military in the 1990s, and concludes with the first detailed account of the so-called Badme War, fought between Ethiopia and Eritrea in period 1998-2001. It is illustrated by many contemporary photographs, maps and color profiles.

Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars. Volume 2: Eritrean War of Independence, 1988-1991 & Badme War, 1998-2001

Revolution, civil wars, and guerilla warfare wracked Ethiopia during three turbulent decades at the end of the twentieth century. This book is a pioneering study of the military history and political significance of this crucial Horn of Africa region during that period. Drawing on new archival materials and interviews, Gebru Tareke illuminates the conflicts, comparing them to the Russian and Iranian revolutions in terms of regional impact.

 

Writing in vigorous and accessible prose, Tareke brings to life the leading personalities in the domestic political struggles, strategies of the warring parties, international actors, and key battles. He demonstrates how the brutal dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam lacked imagination in responding to crises and alienated the peasantry by destroying human and material resources. And he describes the delicate balance of persuasion and force with which northern insurgents mobilized the peasantry and triumphed. The book sheds invaluable light not only on modern Ethiopia but also on post-colonial state formation and insurrectionary politics worldwide.

The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa

Wounded Nation: How a Once Promising Eritrea Was Betrayed and Its Future Compromised

In this eminently readable, concise history of Ethiopia, Harold Marcus surveys the evolution of the oldest African nation from prehistory to the present. For the updated edition, Marcus has written a new preface, two new chapters, and an epilogue, detailing the development and implications of Ethiopia as a Federal state and the war with Eritrea.

A History of Ethiopia

In the late 19th century, the port of Massawa, in Eritrea on the Red Sea, was a thriving, vibrant, multiethnic commercial hub. Red Sea Citizens tells the story of how Massawa rose to prominence as one of Northeast Africa's most important shipping centers. Jonathan Miran reconstructs the social, material, religious, and cultural history of this mercantile community in a period of sweeping change. He shows how Massawa and its citizens benefited from migrations across the Indian Ocean, the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, and the African interior. Miran also notes the changes that took place in Massawa as traders did business and eventually settled. By revealing the dynamic processes at play, this book provides insight into the development of the Horn of Africa that extends beyond borders and boundaries, nations and nationalism.

Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa

This is a personal account of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, fought between May 1998 and June 2000, as well as of the periods immediately preceding and following the conflict. "Shallow Graves" traces shifting local perceptions of time, the nation and the region, beginning in the mid-1990s and concluding with the peace agreement signed between the two governments in 2018.

Richard Reid is a historian who was based in Eritrea during the war, and who continued to visit both that country and Ethiopia for several years afterwards. This personal perspective offers a more vivid, intimate portrait of the experience of the war than can normally be offered by putatively "objective" academic accounts. As well as providing first-hand reportage and analysis, Reid problematises the role of the historian--and specifically the foreign historian--as the supposedly impartial observer of events. His eloquent narrative, constructed around conversations and interactions with a range of local witnesses, friends and colleagues, explores the impact of prolonged war and its aftermath--both on private and public memory, and on the nature of history itself.


Shallow Graves: A Memoir of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War

Against All Odds is the firsthand account of Eritrea's epic 30-year struggle for independence and social justice. With almost no outside support, Eritrean nationalist brought successive U.S.- and Soviet-backed Ethiopian governments to their knees. At the same time, they worked to liberate women, workers and peasant farmers from centuries of grinding poverty, chronic hunger and numbing oppression. Connell argues that it was the blending of a social revolution with political objectives that enabled this uniquely self-reliant liberation front to weld Eritrea's fractious society -- half Christian, half Muslim, from nine ethnic groups m into one of the most remarkable fighting forces in modern history. In a new Afterword, he describes their efforts to translate wartime values and experience into sustainable strategies for developing the new country.

Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution with a New Afterword on the Postwar Transition

Eritrean independence under the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (now the People's Front for Democracy and Justice) became an international cause celebre during the 1980s. Eritrea was the first African nation to gain independence in the post-colonial period and appeared to be opening a new and progressive path in African politics. But the promise of the revolution was soon betrayed by the outbreak of war with Ethiopia, the PFDJ's increasingly repressive domestic policies, its mismanagement of the country's economy, and its hostile relations with its neighbours. The PFDJ government dismantled existing formal and informal institutions, crippled the private sector, banned private newspapers, civil and political society organisations, expelled international NGOs and aid agencies when over two-thirds of the population were dependent on food aid, detained without trial journalists, thousands of dissidents, and former leaders of the liberation struggle, and turned national service from an instrument of nation building and national integration into an instrument of open-ended forced labour. In this well-researched first account of post-independence Eritrea, Gaim Kibreab gives a detailed and critical analysis of how things went woefully wrong and how the former 'liberators' turned into oppressors with no respect for the rule of law, human rights and religious freedom. GAIM KIBREAB is Professor of Research &amp; Director of Refugee Studies, Department of Social &amp; Policy Studies, London South Bank University Published in association with the Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.

Eritrea: A Dream Deferred

Set in the Italian colony of Eritrea during the Second World War, "The Good Italian," is a love story, a war story, a story of heroism and of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Will appeal to fans of Louis de Berniere's Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the novels of William Boyd.

Enzo Secchi, harbourmaster for Massawa, Eritrea's main port, is a loyal Italian colonial servant. He takes pride in running the docks, enjoys the occasional drink with his gregarious friend Salvatore, colonel of the local Italian garrison, and listens to Caruso in his spare time. But he is lonely and when Salvatore suggests he find an Eritrean housekeeper to cook, clean - and maybe share his bed - Enzo takes the plunge and advertises. Salvatore's own tastes run to the young and nubile, but Enzo surprises himself by choosing Aatifa, a sharp-tongued woman in her 30s with a complicated family life, who takes the job as a last resort. What neither of them had counted on was falling in love.

But it is 1935, Fascism is on the rise, and Mussolini does not intend Eritrea to remain a backwater for long. Italian forces bent on invading Ethiopia begin arriving at the port. And with them come new laws - including one forbidding 'Relationships of a Conjugal Nature' with Eritrean women . . .

Meanwhile, Salvatore finds himself at the head of the invasion force bound for Ethiopia. Gone are the glory days of garrison life; it is a bitter campaign, laying bare all the brutality of Italian colonial ambition. Its consequences for Salvatore, and for Enzo and Aatifa as they contrive to hide their relationship in plain sight, will change all three lives for ever.

The Good Italian

This is the real-life story of 10-year old refugee Hamid, who flees Eritrea with his mother to escape the war and threats to his family from the government. Told in Hamid's own words, this story describes the hardship experienced by immigrants who are rebuilding their lives with little understanding of the language and culture of their new country.

Hamid's Story: A Real-Life Account of His Journey from Eritrea

The dictator who grew so rich on his country's cocoa crop that he built a 35-storey-high basilica in the jungles of the Ivory Coast. The austere, incorruptible leader who has shut Eritrea off from the world in a permanent state of war and conscripted every adult into the armed forces. In Equatorial Guinea, the paranoid despot who thought Hitler was the saviour of Africa and waged a relentless campaign of terror against his own people. The Libyan army officer who authored a new work of political philosophy, The Green Book, and lived in a tent with a harem of female soldiers, running his country like a mafia family business.

And behind these almost incredible stories of fantastic violence and excess lie the dark secrets of Western greed and complicity, the insatiable taste for chocolate, oil, diamonds and gold that has encouraged dictators to rule with an iron hand, siphoning off their share of the action into mansions in Paris and banks in Zurich and keeping their people in dire poverty.

Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa

The River is the Border: From Eritrea to Freedom

This book presents an analysis of the identity of the agro-pastoral Saho community in Eritrea, which was cemented during centuries of confrontation with Abyssinian rulers and by their rebellion against external domination. It examines the emergence of the Saho's national consciousness and the process of political identity formation during the British Military Administration in competition with the pro-Ethiopian Unionist Party. The book describes the active participation of the Saho in the national liberation struggle of Eritrea, and it evaluates the impact of post-independence policies of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front/People's Front for Democracy and Justice on the Saho community. (Series: African Politics / Politiques Africaines - Vol. 5)

The Saho of Eritrea: Ethnic Identity and National Consciousness

Some people call Eritrea the “North Korea of Africa.” But to two friends Chenkelo and Misghe, it is home. 

In the picturesque capital of Asmara, these two educated young men are forced to choose between poverty and hustle as they hide from a national service conscription that would send them to the front lines. Charismatic Misghe is a charmer, a philosopher, and a loving son who is capable of having any woman in the city. But he’s about to flee his oppressive homeland—putting his longtime friendship with Chenkelo at stake. 

Chenkelo is a consummate hustler, resentful of his lot but in love with his city and his country. He has a poet’s heart whose passion will soon fuel activism and a belief that Eritrea’s beloved national project can yet be saved. 

Caught between the temptation of the Western dream and duty to their stagnated nation, Misghe and Chenkelo epitomize and transcend the trials and tribulations of an entire African generation. Amid the Chaos depicts the unflinching reality of a restless Eritrea in search of a meaning.

Amid the Chaos

Eritrea: Revolution at Dusk

After decades of bloodshed and famine, the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict is the longest contemporary war of liberation in Africa. This work examines the nationalist movement in the context of the political and diplomatic struggle, and argues that superpower/UN collusion is partly to blame.

Eritrea

I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation

Michela Wrong

Understanding Eritrea: Inside Africa's Most Repressive State

Martin Plaut

Eritrea at a Crossroads : A Narrative of Triumph, Betrayal and Hope

Andebrhan Welde Giorgis

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Robert D. Kaplan

Ciao Asmara

Justin Hill

Gratitude in Low Voices: A Memoir

Dawit Gebremichael Habte

Eccentric Graces: Eritrea and Ethiopia Through the Eyes of a Traveler

Julia Stewart

Asmara: Africa's Secret Modernist City

Edward Denison

Guardians of the Tradition: Historians and Historical Writing in Ethiopia and Eritrea

James De Lorenzi

Under the Red Sea Sun

Edward Ellsberg

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

Robert D. Kaplan

Never Kneel Down: Drought, Development, and Liberation in Eritrea

Stuart Holland

To Asmara

Thomas Keneally

The Dynamics of an Unfinished African Dream: Eritrea: Ancient History to 1968

Mohamed Kheir Omer

First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Loung Ung

Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners

Dan Connell

Blood, Land, and Sex: Legal and Political Pluralism in Eritrea

Lyda Favali

The Eritrean Struggle for Independence: Domination, Resistance, Nationalism, 1941-1993

Ruth Iyob

Ethiopian-Eritrean Wars. Volume 2: Eritrean War of Independence, 1988-1991 & Badme War, 1998-2001

Adrien Fontanellaz

The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa

Gebru Tareke

Wounded Nation: How a Once Promising Eritrea Was Betrayed and Its Future Compromised

H. Selassie Bereket

A History of Ethiopia

Harold G. Marcus

Red Sea Citizens: Cosmopolitan Society and Cultural Change in Massawa

Jonathan Miran

Shallow Graves: A Memoir of the Ethiopia-Eritrea War

Richard Reid

Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution with a New Afterword on the Postwar Transition

Dan Connell

Eritrea: A Dream Deferred

Gaim Kibreab

The Good Italian

Stephen Burke

Hamid's Story: A Real-Life Account of His Journey from Eritrea

Andy Glynne

Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa

Paul Kenyon

The River is the Border: From Eritrea to Freedom

Ghirmay Neghasi Iris Sandkuhler

The Saho of Eritrea: Ethnic Identity and National Consciousness

Abdulkader Saleh Mohammad

Amid the Chaos

Nathan Haddish Mogos

Eritrea: Revolution at Dusk

Robert Papstein

Eritrea, a Pawn in World Politics

Okbazghi Yohannes