Oromay - by Baalu Girma (Paperback)

About the Book

"December 1981, Ethiopia. Tsegaye Hailemaryam, a well-known journalist for the state-run media, has just landed in Asmara. He is on assignment as the head of propaganda for the Red Star campaign, a massive effort by the Ethiopian government to end the Eritrean insurgency. There, amid the city's bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents, he juggles the demands of his superiors while trying to reassure his fiancâee back home that he's not straying with Asmara's famed beauties. As Tsegaye falls in love with Asmara-and, in spite of his promises, with dazzling, enigmatic local woman Fiammetta-his misgivings about the campaign grow. Tsegaye confronts the horror of war when he is sent with an elite army unit to attack the insurgents' mountain stronghold. In the aftermath, he encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature. Oromay became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was swiftly banned for its frank depiction of the regime. The author vanished soon thereafter; the consensus is that he was murdered in retaliation for Oromay. A sweeping and timeless story about power and betrayal in love and war, the novel remains Girma's masterpiece"--

Book Synopsis

A journalist finds himself embroiled in a disastrous government campaign as well as a sweeping romance in this landmark English translation of Ethiopia's most famous novel.

An engrossing political thriller and a tale of love and war for readers of John Le Carré and Philip Kerr.

December 1981, Ethiopia. Tsegaye Hailemaryam, a well-known journalist for the state-run media, has just landed in Asmara. He is on assignment as the head of propaganda for the Red Star campaign, a massive effort by the Ethiopian government to end the Eritrean insurgency. There, amid the city's bars and coffeehouses buzzing with spies and government agents, he juggles the demands of his superiors while trying to reassure his fiancée back home that he's not straying with Asmara's famed beauties.

As Tsegaye falls in love with Asmara--and, in spite of his promises, with dazzling, enigmatic local woman Fiammetta--his misgivings about the campaign grow. Tsegaye confronts the horror of war when he is sent with an elite army unit to attack the insurgents' mountain stronghold. In the aftermath, he encounters betrayals that shake his faith in both the regime and human nature.

Oromay became an instant sensation when first published in 1983 and was swiftly banned for its frank depiction of the regime. The author vanished soon thereafter; the consensus is that he was murdered in retaliation for Oromay. A sweeping and timeless story about power and betrayal in love and war, the novel remains Girma's masterpiece.

Review Quotes

Praise for Oromay

A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Novel of 2025

"Oromay often reads like an 80s-era Bond film, in which 007 is not a secret agent but a journalist on a particularly intense deadline (though the novel also has its fair share of agents and double agents). Gorgeous physical settings (palm-lined, Italianate art deco Asmara, the wide Red Sea sweep of Massawa beach, the pitiless peaks of the Nakfa mountains); the dark chess games of the cold war; switchbacks and betrayals, hidden loyalties, cross-loyalties and grudges . . . and always that relentless, tightly plotted pace . . . Language is power, everyone in the novel knows that; the novel is itself an enactment of it."
--The Guardian

"A fast, fluent and often gripping read . . . From clandestine Le Carré-style intrigue and steamy Fleming-esque trysts to scenes from a battlefield 'hellscape' that nod to Hemmingway."
―The Spectator

"The translation by David DeGusta, a writer and translator, and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, a longtime friend of the Baalu family, unveils an intriguing narrative that wonderfully evokes the energy of time and place. It reminds us that, even during war in countries we don't know or understand, people are living the best lives they can, embracing life where they can find it . . . Like the Casablanca of the Humphrey Bogart film, Asmara and subsequently Massawa port, are depicted as dens of intrigue, where spies, lovers and revolutionaries mingle in the coffee houses and hotel bars."
--Financial Times

"We can only speculate on the disappearance of its writer, but Oromay's criminal testimony is indisputable . . . This is what gives currency to its newfound recognition in the United States, where the aggressions against watchdog media and library books are already deepening in severity. The more Oromay is read, the greater risk it has of becoming yet another victim of literary and journalistic censorship in America. The same could be said for any literature that threatens nefarious administrations and their sycophants."
--The Baffler

"Oromay is an astonishing and compelling tale of revolution and betrayal. It is also the story of Tsegaye--witty, observant, and dedicated--who finds love at the same time as he discovers how dangerous his world really is. Written with breathtaking psychological precision, Baalu Girma's novel is still frighteningly relevant today. Oromay is impossible to put down. As the last book ever written before Baalu Girma disappeared, what you have before you is also an uncompromising testimony to the power of words to outlast regimes. Oromay is a gift to a new generation of readers."
--Maaza Mengiste, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Shadow King

"Reading Baalu Girma's novel Oromay sent me back to the time when I first watched the film Casablanca. No, it's not about the similarity of the plot. It's the same surefire set of ingredients that draws you into the story and makes you empathize with the characters. Eritrea in the 1980s, war, junta, coffee shops where local spies and CIA agents drink coffee, a love story . . . A gripping novel that has 'documentary' flavor."
--Andrey Kurkov, Booker Prize-longlisted author of The Silver Bone

"Oromay is a startling, intimate and gripping saga of war-time Ethiopia turned topsy-turvy. Its cast of quirky characters, as quick to spout revolutionary rhetoric as to deploy cutthroat maneuvers, imbues the narrative with tension, humor and dramatic heft. This fierce but also tender-hearted story unveils a revolution being hollowed out by the hypocrisies, cheap sloganeering and moral fudginess of its ostensible stewards. In his brave dissection of rampaging power and evasive language, Girma recalls George Orwell and Aldous Huxley."
--Okey Ndibe, author of Foreign Gods, Inc.

"Oromay by Baalu Girma is a fictionalized account of one of the deadliest episodes of Ethiopia's war against Eritrea. . . Against a backdrop of divided allegiances, a treacherous world of espionage and bureaucratic nightmare, a love affair is born but the violence, tyranny and corruption surrounding the couple threaten to devour everything they hold dear. Oromay, a novel widely believed to have cost its author his life, is a prayer against war, oppression and the erosion of our humanity. David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu did an outstanding job, giving the world access to one of the most important and enduring works of literature in Ethiopia."
--Djamila Ibrahim, author of Things Are Good Now

"Ethiopia has spent a hundred years composing extraordinary novels in Amharic, yet virtually none have been translated into English. David DeGusta and Mesfin Felleke Yirgu have provided the world a service by translating Oromay by Baalu Girma, one of the most important novels in Amharic. Banned within days of publication, this thinly veiled roman à clef by a former propagandist about Ethiopian government repression in Eritrea details the roguish main character's increasing disillusionment as he witnesses the bureaucracy of occupation and the horrors of war. In an admirably natural English, this lively translation captures the humor and verve of the original. The translators revel in all the strengths of this dialog-driven war journalism story and its sharp social observations about who sacrifices the most humanity, oppressor or oppressed."
--Wendy Laura Belcher, co-translator of The Hatata Inquiries

"The new translation of Oromay, in wonderfully natural English, is the result of a collaboration between Mesfin Felleke Yirgu, a Baalu family friend, and David DeGusta, an American palaeoanthropologist now working as a writer and translator . . . The plot is fictional, even though the backdrop is factual and some of the characters are based on real-life figures. It follows Tsegaye Hailemaryam, a TV journalist dispatched to Eritrea as head of propaganda for the Red Star campaign, who falls in love with a mysterious Eritrean woman, Fiammetta Gilay. As the Derg's spies hunt insurgent infiltrators seeking to sabotage the campaign, the lovers become embroiled in a web of espionage and counterespionage."
--The Times Literary Supplement

"Despite its heavy subject matter, Oromay is full of dark humor and heartfelt sentiment, and to read it is to gain a sense of the dynamism and liveliness of its author, making his fate all the more tragic to contemplate."
--CrimeReads

"An exemplary anti-war novel."
--Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Gripping . . . Girma's expert plotting reaches a tense and emotional climax when Tsegaye joins the front lines . . . Readers will have a tough time putting this one down."
--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Baalu Girma (1939 - ?) was one of Ethiopia's greatest writers and Oromay was his most famous novel. Its unflattering portrait of the regime caused the book to be banned and Girma to be fired. He vanished on Valentine's Day 1984, likely kidnapped and murdered by the Derg.