To Asmara

by Thomas Keneally

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.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Eritrea, Historical Fiction, War, Literary Fiction, Literature

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Thomas Michael Keneally, AO (born 7 October 1935) is an Australian novelist, playwright and author of non-fiction. He is best known for writing Schindler's Ark, the Booker Prize-winning novel of 1982, which was inspired by the efforts of Poldek Pfefferberg, a Holocaust survivor. The book would later be adapted to Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Often published under the name Tom Keneally in Australia.

Life and Career:

Born in Sydney, Keneally was educated at St Patrick's College, Strathfield, where a writing prize was named after him. He entered St Patrick's Seminary, Manly to train as a Catholic priest but left before his ordination. He worked as a Sydney schoolteacher before his success as a novelist, and he was a lecturer at the University of New England (1968–70). He has also written screenplays, memoirs and non-fiction books.

Keneally was known as "Mick" until 1964 but began using the name Thomas when he started publishing, after advice from his publisher to use what was really his first name. He is most famous for his Schindler's Ark (1982) (later republished as Schindler's List), which won the Booker Prize and is the basis of the film Schindler's List (1993). Many of his novels are reworkings of historical material, although modern in their psychology and style.

Keneally has also acted in a handful of films. He had a small role in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (based on his novel) and played Father Marshall in the Fred Schepisi movie, The Devil's Playground (1976) (not to be confused with a similarly-titled documentary by Lucy Walker about the Amish rite of passage called rumspringa).

In 1983, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). He is an Australian Living Treasure.

He is a strong advocate of the Australian republic, meaning the severing of all ties with the British monarchy, and published a book on the subject in Our Republic (1993). Several of his Republican essays appear on the web site of the Australian Republican Movement.

Keneally is a keen supporter of rugby league football, in particular the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles club of the NRL. He made an appearance in the rugby league drama film The Final Winter (2007).

In March 2009, the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, gave an autographed copy of Keneally's Lincoln biography to President Barack Obama as a state gift.

Most recently Thomas Keneally featured as a writer in the critically acclaimed Australian drama, Our Sunburnt Country.

Thomas Keneally's nephew Ben is married to the former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally.

Reviews

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 3 out of 5]

The year is 1987. The place, war-torn Eritrea. A mysterious Eritrean intelligence officer, Col. Tesfaya, hints of a major offensive against the Ethiopian forces occupying Asmara, the historic capital of Eritrea. Forget the humanitarian aid convoys bypassing starving Eritreans unless under international scrutiny. Forget the trucks diverted to Sudan by profiteering officials. Forget the smuggled armaments concealed in trucks marked with NGO insignia. Not newsworthy! “It is not so extraordinary, it is not startling. It is the daily traffic of the hunger zone,” Tesfaya comments. (p. 30) An eyewitness account of a major war offensive, on the other hand. That would be newsworthy. Australian journalist Tim Darcy jumps at the opportunity Tesfaya offers – To witness history in the making.

Keneally immerses the reader in a different sort of witnessing. Through the backstories of his characters he reveals a brutal history of colonialism, despotism, genocide, Western hubris, and cynical geopolitics played out across the Horn of Africa.

Salim Genete, an Eritrean businessman awaiting arrival of his son in Orotta, is a reminder that there was once a centuries old merchant class on the shores of the Red Sea. This was before the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1935 only to be replaced by the British in 1941. In 1952 the United Nations made Eritrea a federation of Ethiopia. The idea of a federation was a fiction. In reality Eritrea became a colony of Ethiopia, valued for its location, not its people.

Julia (Lady Julia if we insist on formality) sought to eradicate the cultural practice of clitoridectomy. She recalls the civil war in the 1970's between the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), a popular splinter group scoring victories over the Ethiopian military. “Saudi agents and even the CIA were said to hang around Kassala, the Sudanese border oasis and city, encouraging the ELF to attack the EPLF. For it was a matter of surprise...that no one seemed to want the Eritreans to win. Neither the Americans nor the Saudis, who wished to see Mengistu and the Dergue fall and Ethiopia drop ripely back into their camp, nor the Russians, who were supplying military advice and arms. No one wanted an independent Eritrean republic along that stretch of the Red Sea shore.” (p.83)

Mark Henry the veteran relief worker recalls the time of the Fetasha, brutal armed vigilantes that Mengistu unleashed to enforce political orthodoxy. They were bullies, eager to punish the weak and defenseless. During that period, Henry was expelled from the country and his girlfriend, Petra, whom he refers to as his fiancé, was placed under house arrest (or so he claims; his travel companions believe Petra is more likely dead).

An Ethiopian P.O.W., Major Perlos Fida, passes through the site of a napalm decimated village. He had always argued that Ethiopian deployment of napalm was merely propaganda. Now, he observes: “The ground seemed full of black shapes into which one did not closely inquire. The earth had been fused to an evil glaze.” (p.163)

The grief Darcy feels is intertwined with guilt and regret over the collapse of his marriage. He and his wife were working among the aborigines. Now, once again, he is confronted by a gulf created by vastly different historical experiences, a gulf he ignored back in Australia, just as he had ignored his wife's suffering and sense of alienation.

The documentary filmmaker, Masihi (Roland Malmédy) adds further doubt over the question of the objective witness. “'That's the puzzle of being a cameraman. The better the polemics the worse the footage. The better the footage, the weaker the contact between the filmmaker and his material.'” (p. 242) Darcy is left to contemplate the loneliness of being not the empathetic witness but the eternally alienated outsider.

Although Darcy is the protagonist, I found his character the least interesting. His epiphany, framed in terms of his failed marriage, was a distraction from the changes the other characters were experiencing. The book's strength was its historical narrative cleverly narrated through the experiences of the supporting characters.

NOTES:
I found that a brief chronology would have been a useful reference in reading this book:
1890-Italy colonized Eritrea
1935 -Italy invaded Ethiopia
1941 -The British displaced Italy
1952-The UN voted in favor of Ethiopia's annexation of Eritrea
1958-Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) formed
1970-Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) splits off from ELF
1974-Emperor Haile Selassie ousted; the Eritrean leader Aman Andom murdered; Mengistu rules
1977 -Soviet Union aids Mengistu against Eritreans
1985-“We are the World” LiveAid concert held
1991-EPLF recaptures Asmara

Keneally points to war, not drought, as the real driver of famine in the Horn of Africa:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/0...

Keneally's memories of Africa: https://www.qantas.com/travelinsider/...

[Joy D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set during the Eritrean War for Independence in the late 1980s, Australian Timothy Darcy is a journalist seeking an interview with a high-profile Ethiopian prisoner of war. He travels with a small group from Sudan to Eritrea. The group includes Henry, an American relief worker attempting to get his Ethiopian fiancé out of the region, Christine, a French woman searching for her father (a cameraman filming the war), and Dame Julia, a humanitarian seeking to educate local girls on health issues. Their journey takes them through the heart of the war zone.

“We climbed the last bends and entered, through a stone doorway in the mountainside, the tail end of the trench system. We were in a deep, cool sap. Beneath a roof of logs and earth to our right, a wide compartment was crowded with soldiers. As my eyes got used to the dimness, I could see that here yet another class was in progress! Third grade science, Moka said.”

Darcy is the narrator, so this book feels like following a journalist on his assignment. He goes into the historical background of the conflict, the famine that occurred simultaneously, the toll taken on the civilian population, and the factions involved. I do not think it is a stretch to say the typical western reader will learn a lot about this time and place in history. An unnamed editor breaks in occasionally to provide context.

A few of the storylines seem superfluous, such as the situation with Darcy's Australian wife, who has left him and is living with another man. I am unsure how this part is supposed to fit with the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict. Otherwise, it is well-written historical fiction.

3.5

[ashok · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the author of Schindler's Ark, is this book about the Eritrean war of independence. The narrator, a journalist going through personal issues of rejection, finds himself at the forefront of a news story on the Eritrean war.

This is a sparsely documented period of recent history - and the book deserves credit for attempting to portray a semi-fictional account of this time.

The basic setting is this -- in the 1980s the Ethiopians under the Dergue regime, carpet bombed Eritrea -- what they considered to be a "rebel province". The Eritreans responded by uniting themselves behind a single front, and eventually ended up defeating their mightier cousins.

The book was written in the late 80s, during a period when things were idealistic about the Eritrean freedom movement. However, the narrator, poses questions for the future for this tiny nation state 'how will this committed military machine fighting for independence cope with independence and the absence of a uniting foe?'. There is a point in the narrative involving a bureaucratic Eritrean military commander where the narrator imagines the military commander in a free Eritrea, behaving in exactly the same manner.

As history will tell us, a couple of decades have passed in Eritrea since the independence war and much of the idealism has disappeared. A refreshingly open constitution was never allowed to pass in 1997. It remains a single party state run by oppresive former freedom fighters.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Towards Asmara by Thomas Keneally was eventually disappointing. As a process, the experience was strewn with beauty, vivid images and arresting phrases. The author, for instance, described desert vegetation ready to burst into life at the first “rumour” of moisture. The writing style has a quirky inventiveness that regularly surprises.

Where Towards Asmara eventually breaks down, however, is its inability to take the reader past the credibility hurdle that spans observer and participant. Not that one particularly wants to participate! War, famine, being shot at, placed under house arrest or being tortured are all experiences to avoid on most working days and Towards Asmara is packed with them. The journalistic skill with which the book’s events are described is enormous. We are introduced to enough history for context, enough current events to situate and enough political interests to begin an understanding.

So if the style is good and the context is engaging, where is the problem? The answer is in the book’s characters. Darcy is an Australian, a bit mixed up after his ethnically Chinese wife ran off with an Aborigine jailbird back home. Now she won’t even deal with him. There’s Amna, an Eritrean guerrilla who has suffered every imaginable torture at the hands of the Dergue. There’s Julia, a British lady of some class who is researching women’s issues for the Anti-Slavery Society. There’s Masihi, a film maker, and Christine from France who finds a role working with him. And here is the problem.

Towards Asmara claims the status of an African novel, but we never experience any aspect of the plot from within an African or local psyche. The place, its people and the events that unfold there are seen from without, via an external interpreter’s filter. The immediacy of war, ambush, famine, conflict becomes lost in the second nature of the characters’ experience. Also, the complications of the personal lives of these observers neither complement nor contrast with the exigencies of fighting for a cause.

Eventually, everything seems unlikely, not least the very involvement of those involved with the events that unfold. At one point, there was a suggestion that Darcy’s ethnic minority wife back home in Australia might be offering an intellectual parallel with the Eritrean struggle. She, an apparent outsider, was allying herself and choosing to travel with an indigenous oppressed race, just like her estranged husband was doing with the Eritreans of Ethiopia. But that idea fizzled out, thankfully, because it could never have been sustained. Towards Asmara is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

At times the style and language are a complete joy. But, when it avoids polemic, it approaches caricature. The reader, like its foreign observer participants, is left out of the understanding and experience the book promised to deliver.

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good. it´s a pity that I didn´t know more of this history because there were many people, places, wars that I had to look up and read about.

Eritrea was fighting for their independence from Ethiopia over a 30 year period. This novel takes place in 1988. A small group of foreigners travel from Port Sudan, Sudan, south to Asmara, Eritrea through battlefields and bunkers Each has their own reason for this treacherous travel.

Timothy Darcy is an Australian working as a journalist for the London Times. He has left Australia because he and his wife, who were both working with a Tribal Council in the desert of Australia, have split up. He doesn't believe he is a daring person; he easily and without a fight gave up his wife to another man. Can he dare to bare his emotions to Amna, an Eritrean bureaucrat and torture survivor? He went to Africa because he believes there is a similarity between Australia and Africa. As he states it, they are both "out of rudiments of earth and fire". He plans to meet Major Fiha who is a POW. Most of the story is told through his eyes.

Henry is an American aid worker and is trying to get his Ethiopian fiancé an exit visa. She is still in Addis Adaba, Ethiopia, under "house arrest".

Christine is a young French woman who is barely in her 20´s. She is looking for her father who is Masihi, the cameraman who has filmed the war for years. She is running away from a lost child and a lost love.

Dame Julia has been living in East Africa for years since her husband died. She spends most of her time educating girls and women about the dangers of female genital mutilation. She joins the group after they all meet and leaves them in a town where she is needed.

They are joined by a group of Eritrean soldiers and helpers who know the roads and villages. It is not an easy journey. In some villages they may spend a week. Their travel is done at night time when the MIGs aren´t flying. During the daytime they spend their time in bunkers. However, they do watch a football game between two Eritrean rebel divisions, they visit POW camps and hospitals and schools for the young soldiers.

This novel is full of details of war, torture, and the price of freedom. I tried to follow their route but I couldn´t locate some of the places on a map. Maybe these villages no longer exist or maybe they are fictitious names. But more than war, this is a story of Darcy trying to come to terms with his lost marriage.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted a lot more information on the causes of the conflict and the cultures of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

[Tamara Curtin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing read that is really like rides I've been on through the region. It's a slow, wandering book, full of odd characters thrown together under strange circumstances. I loved this book, it brought back memories of many trips and many strange travel companions.

[Wendy Tanner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was enthralled by this book. Having just returned from a 6 week visit to Ethiopia, I was keen to read it, to see how it portrayed the country I'd just been to, and its neighbour, Eritrea. I also had become friends with several people who had moved to my area in Australia from these two countries as refugees, so it had a double relevance for me.
I enjoyed Keneally's style immensely. The way he created an intriguing work of fiction, based on historical and anthropological information that he'd obviously researched very well. I had been to 3 different museums in Addis Ababa, including the Museum of Red Terror, which depicted a lot of the atrocities that had been committed under the relatively recent rule of Mengistu and his socialist Dergue, from 1977 to 1991. The book was written in 1998, so Mengistu was still in power, and was still terrorising his countrymen, especially the intelligentsia and anyone who dared to threaten or question his supreme authority. So very similar to other communist dictators, like Pol Pot in Cambodia, or Mao in China. What I did not realise, however, that he and his regime brought down so much destruction and ruin on the neighbouring state of Eritrea, which at that time was still part of Ethiopia. What the book also reveals is the incredible resilience and inventiveness of the Eritreans, who were fiercely fighting for their country's independence. The schools and hospitals that were hewn out of the sides of hills, the way they captured and repurposed the Soviet supplied arms that the Ethiopian army was using. They were portrayed by Keneally with such sympathy and respect. I had obviously only seen the perspective of the Ethiopians during my visit there.
Keneally also depicts very well his characters and as they move through the battered and bombed landscape, towards the lost gem of Asmara, we see many details of the life and customs of the Eritrean people.

[Karlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel about the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict was listed in the bibliography of CUTTING FOR STONE. The novel follows a small group of foreigners into the war zone with the action seen through the eyes of Darcy, a journalist. It is a compelling, upsetting story by the author Schindler's List.

[Velvetink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found at a cake stall. 1 of 7 books for $5 total!.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

For World Refugee Day I chose not to read a memoir, but rather a novel shows with awful clarity why it is that people have been fleeing from conflict in the Horn of Africa for decades.  I have read Towards Asmara, Thomas Keneally's 1989 novel derived from his trip to Eritrea during its war of independence.

According to Stephanie Smee's 2015 biography, Interestingly Enough, The Life Of Tom Keneally, (see my review), the catalyst for the novel was Keneally's meeting with Fessehaie Abraham, a leader of the Eritrean Relief Association in Australia.  Abraham had successfully lobbied the ophthalmologist Fred Hollows to run eye treatment programs in Eritrea, and he enlisted Keneally's support in the hope that the author of Schindler's Ark could contribute to informing the international community.  Because then as now, there were/are wars that gain media attention so that, depending on the media they consume, everyone can have an opinion about them; and there were/are wars that go on for years and years and nobody takes any notice.  It is hard to escape the conclusion that the skin colour of the warring parties has something to do with this.

Whatever about that, Keneally, by then in his fifties, and under the protection of Eritrean rebels, set off for an arduous journey to see for himself how the politics of famine impacted on the people.  It is this experience that gives the novel its authenticity.

He has woven his tale around a disparate group of travellers, all of whom have an agenda and all of whom have a moral dilemma to navigate.  Darcy, troubled by his fractured marriage back in Australia, is a lawyer-turned-journalist whose mission it is to reveal to the world that the Ethiopians are gun-running under the cover of western food-aid.  (Sounds familiar, eh? How is it beyond the wit and will of the UN to put a stop to this?  No wonder potential donors think their money is wasted.) Henry, an American aid-worker is concerned with matters of the heart closer to the action.  His Somalian fiancée is in the hands of the Ethiopians, allegedly under house arrest, and (as we see in the shattering conclusion), he will stop at nothing to get her back.  Christine, a troubled young Frenchwoman wants to find her father who deserted the family long ago, to pursue his ambitions as a cinecamera man.  He is deluded by his obsession with the Eritrean cause and is living among the rebels to whom he yearns to belong.  Finally, (and least convincingly), there is Lady Julia, an upper-class English widow of an old colonialist.  She is on a crusade to end FMG (Female Genital Mutilation), but we don't hear much about that.

Nevertheless, Towards Asmara is a very good story.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2025/06/21/t...

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't all that easy to read, but it shows up some important points. A decade or so after a thinly veiled Live Aid, the same rock stars are outraged that famine again stalks Africa. Well, yes, save people in this famine and they and their several children will die in the famine a decade later. You need to be planting trees and digging wells and bunds in the meantime, not just handing out food.
The Eritrean army is consistently defeating the Ethiopian army, despite being much less resourced. The suggestion is that they keep capturing Russian arms from the Ethiopians and using those.
A divorced man and several other outsiders are driving around looking at sorghum sacks from US aid agencies being transported and distributed. The suggestion is that some arms are being smuggled disguised as grain. The conversation isn't polite or friendly.
Food includes ground-up chickpeas. A lady outsider is wailing about harsh male treatment of women, saying it is male envy of female body parts. No, I think they are just control freaks.
Like I said, not an easy read. Plenty of soldiers, arguments, dust.

[Iman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was confusing on so many levels. firstly, Darcy annoyed the crap out of me. His character is superficial and annoying, and the way he speaks makes it difficult to follow the story. The other characters are irrelevant in that they contribute nothing to the story. The whole book really had no plot, it's just Darcy playing a journalist at the front, it seems that he's embarked on that age-old journey where white people go to Africa just to feel something. Overall, the book seemed rambling and confusing, Darcy makes for a poor narrator.
Kudos to Keneally's historical accuracy tho, I can tell he put a lot of research into the semantics and history behind the movement which impressed me a lot. Being Eritrean myself, I just read the book to see what the rest of the world's perceptions of the struggle were while it was happening. If Keneally had focused more so on that and had a main character that wasn't a bumbling fool this book would have definitely warranted 4 stars or above. As it is now, it's a 2.5.

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

To Asmara by Thomas Keneally does a great job of comparing and contrasting Fryer River, an area of Australia, and Eritrea. The narrator of this story is also an Australian who travels to the war torn Horn of Africa for his work as a journalist. More interesting than the landscape are the indigenous people of both continents who clearly have their own values and ways of living to improve their chances of survival. Within the web of struggle to maintain cultural survival, there are problems of intimacy within marriage.

[Theresemarxyahoo Com · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I known more about the Eritrea-Ethiopia war, it might have made the book more meaningful. I found the travelling companions to have quite unique and often odd personalities which were revealed slowly as the novel progressed. Travelling from Sudan to Eritrea, this group discovered how the Eritreans survived in their war-torn country, always within attack distance from Ethiopia. Timothy Darcy, a journalist, gathered information about bombings, injuries, living conditions, food, friendships and, in general, life in a war-torn nation. While these offered redeeming features of the book, it is not one of my favorites.

[Marian Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. I read this because it was referenced in the endnotes to “Cutting for Stone”. I was hoping to get more background and insight into the Eritrean revolutionary movement. It’s written from the POV of an Australian (white male) journalist traveling with a group of Eritrean fighters, so it reads more like notes and impressions than a coherent narrative. This leads to exotification of them and their struggle, as well as much male gaze. These both detracted from the story for me.

[Natalie Awdry · Rating 1 out of 5]

The start of this novel was promising but it continued to feel so dull and inconsequential and hard to read that it's become the first book I've abandoned in a good number of years. I blamed myself for reading it at bedtime and thinking that that's why I couldn't focus, but then I realised that I don't have the same problem with other novels, or even non-fiction!
Too many disinteresting characters and a narrative which is hard to follow.

[Kay Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every sentence was a pleasure to read. Mr Keneally is a master wordsmith, and managed to include a couple of almost-love stories interwoven with the horrors and stupidity of a war. The story inspired me to do a little research about the liberation of Eritrea from Ethiopia. For a great summary of the book, find the review by Ms Pegasus.

[Tony O Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been looking for a very long time for this book in hardback, at last found it in a wonderful second hand book shop in Inverness Scotland (Leakys), as usual Mr. Keneally places you in the location and as usual he convinces you of the characters.
He is a master

[Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

1987 Eritrean War of Independence from Ethiopia.
Family drama, familial love, Female Genital Mutilation, fighting against FGM, murder, kindness, despair, hope.

By the author of international bestseller "Schindler's List."

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it on kindle - i wasn't thrilled with the book as it felt clunky ...but i tend to not lot like books read as e-books as much as those read in book form.

[Eithne Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was this a travelogue through a war zone or a novel? It read more like the former.
It didn't work as a novel although it was interestingread about Eritrea .

[Eric Steinmuller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Darcy is a painful narrator to follow along with. There was a lot that I liked about the book, but Darcy holds it all back, unfortunately.

[Mimi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is lots to admire about this book, but I had trouble following it, I partly as I don't know a lot about the area where it takes place.

[John Aus · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's a good book.

[Ruth Forbes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great writing!! I was amazed at how I could not put this book down, though the topic was one that held mediocre interest for me!! I love reading a writer who is so brilliant.

[William Tune]

Another good read.

I am hooked now on Keneally. He makes a good yarn and sheds light on that which goes unstated. What next?

[J.R. Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evocative, but at times Keneally drills down too deeply in an attempt to present a picture of starving Ethiopian peoples and Eritrean rebel factions and how they are able to survive. With an interesting back story about a young woman seeking her father and a feminist aid worker struggling to understand what is happening with an eye to helping in some way. However the backstory chapters, about the hero Darcy's former life and divorce in Australia, and never satisfactorily detailed, are disruptive A must read, however, for anyone striving to understand the complexities of the ethnic struggles and the resultant continual war against the Ethiopians that was so much the backdrop of modern day Eritrea.

[Andrew Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't really get into this book. This may have been because I a have been so busy performing "A Midsummer Nights Dream" & was over preoccupied with other things. I just could not really develop any relationships with the characters. It came alive at the end when Henry's true purpose was made clear (which was surprising) but I just hadn't been gripped. There is a detachment to the central character which echoed the desert landscape & some of the scenes of war, which although provided a kind of buffer between some of the horrors of war left me feeling not particularly sympathetic to the characters.

[Daniel Prokop · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book though I found it a little clunky to start with and Thomas Keneally is awesome.

I have worked in Eritrea and found the people inspiring just as Thomas writes in the book. I know that whilst this is fiction that Thomas Keneally did travel twice into Eritrea during the conflict at great risk to his life and I met one Eritrean man who met with Thomas during his research trips.

Towards Asmara is a great story, wonderful accurate insights into people set against a background of one of the little known 30 year conflict.