Being a native of Gojjam “where everyone knew the evil eye flourished,” complicated Tsega’s relationship to the people of Gondar and significantly so after he became Aleqa. And yet as Yetemegnu expressed the frequent violence that her often kind and loving husband precariously inflicts she also conveyed her aspirations and her rebellious stance that she continually conceived. It is this complicated relationship between husband and wife that the author recreates in heartening words, in deeply affecting reflections and in meticulously written historical contexts. But while that phrase occurred to me many times while reading The Wife’s Tale, it is only half the story. Edemariam’s gaze travels from the “silver spears” of eucalyptus leaves to “wobble-humped zebus” and goats “plotting delinquency”.

While she hints at a great and deep affinity with her grandmother, she lays down her boundaries firmly. Photograph: 4th Estate/Harper Collins Yetemegnu, subject of Aida Edemariam’s memoir, who lived through the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. It is through this brief account of Aleqa Tsega’s life that the subject of the book, Yetemegnu, evolves.Yètèmegnu’s husband, Tsèga, is the central force in her life but he is shadowy, at times brutal, at other times tender, a talented but low-status man trying to climb the ecclesiastical pole.

Again, it was as if Aida was telling me the story of my own mother, who was also a child when she was first brought to my father’s house as his wife. Her husband is a priest who rises up the ecclesiastical ranks and then becomes a judge under the aegis of Emperor Haile Selassie. The wedding scene distils the wonder and confusion of the child bride who feels something remarkable is happening but is barely cognisant of what it means: “The long black cape was lined, the heavy gold filigree around the collar and down the front made it heavy, and it was getting heavier. Indeed, there were many other stories that revolved around the Italian occupation; the brothels that were frequented by Italians, Tsega’s administrative duties for 44 churches in Gondar, as well as the prayers of mercy by the deacons and priests of Gonderoch Maryam and Ba’aata.It was Memhir Hiruy “famed throughout the country for his skill with qiné,” who first saw Tsega’s exceptional knowledge. Edemariam, a Guardian journalist, says in her acknowledgments that she spent years reading Ethiopian history “before I could begin to understand the world in which she [Yetemegnu] grew up”. It was Zora Neale Hurston who stated in her 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God that the black woman “is the mule of the world”. Born sometime in the 1920s, Yètèmegnu has lived her life with forbearance but also with courage, creativity and love; she nourishes many people with her own hands, including the infant of a destitute family left with her during the famine of 1984.

Aida Edemariam found the subject of this engaging biography in her own family tree – The Wife’s Tale being the story of her paternal grandmother. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. It is as if Aida wanted to understand her own unfamiliar journey to such experiences and that she also wanted to urgently remind the reader about notions of culture that were once important but are now completely erased from the memory of contemporary knowledge. The growing social mobility from which her husband benefited accelerates to the degree that all of her traditional privileges are torn away and she is forced to live on a small stipend from the Marxist regime. Edemariam takes the facts of Yètèmegnu’s life – her illiteracy, her isolation, her submission to her husband and to Selassie – and goes beyond them.We find in many parts of the book that the recording of Yetemegnu’s experience was not adequate by itself. That’s what I’m like after reading Aida Edemariam’s enriching book about her grandmother’s long life (1916-2013) in Ethiopia, from child bride to wrinkled great-grandmother. We enter an ancient-seeming world of royal courts, courtiers, and the mania of an absolute monarchy that holds everything – from legal appeals to school places to office jobs – within its palm.