Justin D Hill

"The dreams we all had which sparkled for a short while in the hot sun of Eritrea"
By sally tarbox on 11 December 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Justin Hill went out to Eritrea as a volunteer aid worker in 1996. The country had just emerged from thirty years of conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia, and Hill writes of the aftermath: the damaged buildings but far more importantly a damaged people. Countless deaths; people with horrifying tales to tell; and a sense of malaise as the long fought-for and dreamed-of independent Eritrea fails to materialise.
As former fighters get the top jobs, there remains a sense that conflict is something to aspire to; warfare remains a glorious state.
Hill's account concludes with his evacuation as war starts to break out anew...
Having read two accounts of Eritrea in the 30s by Italian doctor/ administrator Alberto Denti di Pirajno (qv), which portrayed a rather magical place, it was sad to read Hill's contrasting its time as an Italian colony with the country today:

"The Italian aristocrat Duke Denti di Pirajno had reported lions here in the 1930s; and I saw a village called Elephant Water- but all the big game was long gone. The war had seen to that; when soldiers weren't killing each other they turned their guns on the wildlife around them. They'd left the land barren: dust and stones, devastated by a virulent plague of human beings."

A beautiful country but a seemingly hopeless situation.
B/w photos.… (más)

This book is sometimes categorized as 'historical fiction', but that's still not quite accurate. The book is a fictional account of a historical Tang Dynasty (618-906 CE) poetess (Yu Xuanji) whom we know only vaguely through a handful of poems, a reference to a book of her works and diaries (now lost), and a historical reference to her death 12 years after she was executed. It is, however, a beautifully written story woven around the main themes of her poetry--the betrayals of life, love, beauty, families, society. In this respect, it does crystallize some of the most important aspects of the period--the dynasty's obsession with romanticism and refinement, village life, city life, peasant lives, aristocratic careers and interests, the roles and duties of wives and concubines. The book includes several of the poetess' actual poetry as translated by the author, who was inspired to write this novel while translating her poems.

Perhaps the best category to capture its genre is fiction 'inspired by history'. As the author notes, "this novel started as a collection of translations of Yu Xuanji's poems, which formed the skeleton on which the rest of the book has grown" (p. 438).

It's a light read, a book I would categorize as "summer reading". Read it for entertainment for it is entertaining, but if you're looking for insights into Tang Chinese history or society, your time is better spent elsewhere.

If however, you're looking for a story about betrayals, this book will not disappoint.… (más)