Beneath the Lion's Gaze

By Maaza Mengiste
(W. W. Norton & Company, Hardcover, 9780393071764, 308pp.)

Publication Date: January 2010

Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback, Compact Disc, Compact Disc, MP3 CD

Categories: Historical - General

Selected by Indie Booksellers for the February 2010 Indie Next List

“Beneath the Lion's Gaze is a riveting novel focused on the primacy of family relationships against the violent backdrop of Ethiopia's 1974 Revolution. Hailu, a prominent doctor, and his two grown sons experience their country's tragedy and their own family's grief through very different prisms of understanding, yet they remain connected even through the gruesome terror overtaking their city. Very hard to put down!”

-- Caitlin Doggart, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Chatham, MA

Description

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. 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.

In Ethiopia, A Monarch Falls In 'The Lion's Gaze'

Sunday, Feb 14, 2010

In Maaza Mengiste's first novel, Beneath The Lion's Gaze, she tells the story of a nation at war with itself. Mengiste was born in Ethiopia during the early days of the revolution, which, in 1974, brought down the country's 3,000-year-old monarchy. More at NPR.org

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Conversation Starters from ReadingGroupChoices.com

What role do the lions of the title play in the book? What do they represent?

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