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.

About the Author
Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Maaza Mengiste received a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Also a Fulbright Scholar and a professor at Queens College, she is the author of The Shadow King and Beneath the Lion's Gaze, and a 2018 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in New York City.

Reviews
"An extraordinary novel, which assembles a dauntingly broad cast of characters and, through them, tells stories that nobody can want to hear, in such a way that we cannot stop listening." -- Claire Messud - Bookforum
"Revolutionary Ethiopia in the seventies is the searing backdrop for Maaza Mengiste's incandescent debut...the acutely observed story of a family-a prominent doctor and his sons, one moderate, one mutinous-undone by war." -- Vogue
"The real marvel of this tender novel is its coiled plotting, in which coincidence manages to evoke the colossal emotional toll of the revolution." -- The New Yorker
"Mengiste gracefully builds the story to a heart-pumping conclusion...Even with its share of tragedy, this is an absorbing drama...enhanced by the author's spare, spectacular prose." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch


Awards
Short-listed for Center for Fiction First Novel Prize 2010 and Dayton Literary Peace Prize 2011.



Book Information
ISBN 9780393338881
Author Maaza Mengiste
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 289g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 142mm * 25mm