What do you think?
Rate this book
White Hyena
'Alive, artistic, colourful and real.'
This book will pick you up, swirl you round and immerse you in the Ethiopia of the 1980s. With its Eskista beats, coffee ceremonies, friendships and laughter, its mountains and fireside encounters, its loudspeakers in markets and fruit and veg stalls in Piazza.
Based on real-life experiences, these are the intertwining stories of Ashebir and Izzie. A boy growing up in the northern highlands and a young English woman finding her feet on the streets of Addis Ababa. As the worlds they each know fall away, both must embark on a search for who they really are. It is a story of the pain of loss and the power of hope. The deep rupture of separation and the healing of reunion. And the story of a mother and her son in the shadow of the white hyena.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to projects supporting the health, welfare and livelihoods of rural women traders in Ethiopia.
This book will pick you up, swirl you round and immerse you in the Ethiopia of the 1980s. With its Eskista beats, coffee ceremonies, friendships and laughter, its mountains and fireside encounters, its loudspeakers in markets and fruit and veg stalls in Piazza.
Based on real-life experiences, these are the intertwining stories of Ashebir and Izzie. A boy growing up in the northern highlands and a young English woman finding her feet on the streets of Addis Ababa. As the worlds they each know fall away, both must embark on a search for who they really are. It is a story of the pain of loss and the power of hope. The deep rupture of separation and the healing of reunion. And the story of a mother and her son in the shadow of the white hyena.
Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to projects supporting the health, welfare and livelihoods of rural women traders in Ethiopia.
569 pages, Paperback
Published March 31, 2023
3 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 2, 2026
Wow. This book is wonderful. A powerful story told beautifully.
It is set in Ethiopia in the months leading up to the drought and famine that devastated that part of the world in 1984. These events are told through three primary characters. A boy, Ashebir, and his mother, Zewdie. For me, Zewdie is one of the great heroines of modern literature... an extraordinary woman doing all that she can to keep her son alive in the face of devastating circumstances.
Von Massow brilliantly describes the slow motion unfolding of a catastrophe, and the deep sadness that started to hang over Zewdie and Ashebir. And the fragility of life when one depends on subsistence farming and the weather. She humanises a famine which tends to be discussed in terms of 'millions'. I learnt so much about how people's lives slowly unravelled, the incredibly tough decisions they had to make, and how they ended up in the camps. I was gripped throughout.
The story switches between Zewdie/ Ashebir, and Izzie, an accidental NGO worker based in Addis Ababa. This helps to provide a little relief from Ashebir's story and is powerful in how it communicated the differences in people's lives, and the guilt (or not) felt by the expats in fancy restaurants, etc.
I bought this book at the Oxford Indie Book Fair. I'm so glad I did. It has profoundly moved me.
It is set in Ethiopia in the months leading up to the drought and famine that devastated that part of the world in 1984. These events are told through three primary characters. A boy, Ashebir, and his mother, Zewdie. For me, Zewdie is one of the great heroines of modern literature... an extraordinary woman doing all that she can to keep her son alive in the face of devastating circumstances.
Von Massow brilliantly describes the slow motion unfolding of a catastrophe, and the deep sadness that started to hang over Zewdie and Ashebir. And the fragility of life when one depends on subsistence farming and the weather. She humanises a famine which tends to be discussed in terms of 'millions'. I learnt so much about how people's lives slowly unravelled, the incredibly tough decisions they had to make, and how they ended up in the camps. I was gripped throughout.
The story switches between Zewdie/ Ashebir, and Izzie, an accidental NGO worker based in Addis Ababa. This helps to provide a little relief from Ashebir's story and is powerful in how it communicated the differences in people's lives, and the guilt (or not) felt by the expats in fancy restaurants, etc.
I bought this book at the Oxford Indie Book Fair. I'm so glad I did. It has profoundly moved me.
September 16, 2023
"White Hyena" is a great read. It's one of those books that you read for the atmosphere and characters as well as for the story. I found myself looking forward to the times when I could sit down with a coffee, a biscuit, and "White Hyena". There's an authority and confidence in the style of the book that comes from direct personal experience of the country and people of Ethiopia. I was so glad that the story ended happily for the main characters. It could so easily not have ended well, and I was conscious throughout the book of the people who experienced those tough times. Well done Fra von Massow. This is an excellent, absorbing, rewarding work.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews