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Tower in the Sky
An eighteen-year old girl sets out to meet a young man whom she had never met before and is swept away by a series of events that transformed her life in a way she could have never imagined. Tower in the sky is the story of love, revolution, hopes, dreams, violence, terror, trust, betrayal, tragedy, disillusionment, self-transformation and the triumphal power of the human spirit. The book vividly depicts a moment in Ethiopia's history when the country convulsed with violence unleashed by a bloodthirsty military government that massacred an untold number of people, especially the young and plunged the country into darkness. It is also the story of thousands of young people who stood up against one of the most brutal dictatorships in history and fought for equality, freedom, social justice and human dignity.
437 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
46 people are currently reading
955 people want to read
About the author
Hiwot Teffera
4 books95 followersBorn and raised in Harar, Ethiopia. Hiwot Teffera is author of two books that are now translated in to Amharic language.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
April 28, 2014
If you were remember the 1980s well, then you remember USA FOR AFRICA, WE ARE THE WORLD, and the global fight to help Ethiopia. This book turns what you think you know upside down.
That's all I am going to say. Hiwot Teffera (admission - Hiwot is a former co-worker of mine) is a quiet person. When she told me she was writing a book about her struggles in Ethiopia and the struggles of her people, I was expecting something along the lines of what I assumed I already knew.
This is not the case. This book not only gives insight on how corrupt governments can be, but this is also a massive indirect slight against our media for not reporting the full story when given the opportunity.
I can't say much more, as Hiwot has a way with words I could never attempt to equal.
That's all I am going to say. Hiwot Teffera (admission - Hiwot is a former co-worker of mine) is a quiet person. When she told me she was writing a book about her struggles in Ethiopia and the struggles of her people, I was expecting something along the lines of what I assumed I already knew.
This is not the case. This book not only gives insight on how corrupt governments can be, but this is also a massive indirect slight against our media for not reporting the full story when given the opportunity.
I can't say much more, as Hiwot has a way with words I could never attempt to equal.
September 2, 2022
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
April 30, 2022
And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughter-House Five
Hiwot Teffera's 'Tower in the sky' is a love story. A love story between a man and a woman and between a woman and her ideal. It's a story about a generation that believed wholeheartedly in the righteousness of a cause and fought single-mindedly for that cause. But in contrast to that admirable dedication and courage of the collective, it also shows us the grim ways human beings can act when the individual moral landscape is replaced with group ideology.
It is one person's Political Autobiography. It is also the story of a generation; the generation that shaped the current Ethiopian social and political landscape in a significant way for better or for worse. What started out as a single thread of Hiwot's life weaves into so many lives and illustrates to us the bigger picture. It is a book that shows the collective psyche through the lens of a single individual.
The book is not just a narration of events. It dives into the psychological and philosophical realm of the reasoning behind those actions. Hiwot brings up the questions of personal and ideological ties, the concept of morality, the value of human life, and of beauty and pleasure...In the first three quarters, she illustrates these ideas subtly through the tone of the writing (such as the matter-of-fact tone of discussing deaths of loved ones and breaking of family ties) and in the final quarter of the book, as she was jailed and stripped of her political involvement, which was at the core of her existence and envelops each and every one of her actions, she comes face to face with the truth as an individual. We see her starting to ask the questions she has been avoiding all along and try to come to terms with reality. She asks 'Does the end justify the means?' and contemplates how much Personal responsibility one is to take for the Collective blunder. We see her going from a blind believer to a cynic (or even a nihilist) and back to a believer in her own right. We see her growth as an individual and through that lens we see many failing to do so.
It is a daring biography in that it is honest. The honesty makes it so-very-human. From the feeling of inadequacy she felt the first moment she met Getachew to the point where she decides she had to accept responsibility for the part she played in all the wrong that happened and come to terms with what had come out of the thing she saw as her life's sole purpose; She puts it all on the scale for the reader to see. Even in the Philosophical analysis, I thought it wasn't being done in a self-redemptive attempt but rather in seeking understanding.
The writing is beautiful and almost poetic in certain places although I thought it was odd how the Amharic words were spelled in English (but perhaps they might read better this way for a foreigner). The flow of the narrative was easy to follow. But, there was a point, in the earlier part of the book, where the writer inserted accounts of friends of Getachew's that made the timeframe and narration a little disorienting.
Overall, It was a beautiful, fascinating and worthwhile read!
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughter-House Five
Hiwot Teffera's 'Tower in the sky' is a love story. A love story between a man and a woman and between a woman and her ideal. It's a story about a generation that believed wholeheartedly in the righteousness of a cause and fought single-mindedly for that cause. But in contrast to that admirable dedication and courage of the collective, it also shows us the grim ways human beings can act when the individual moral landscape is replaced with group ideology.
It is one person's Political Autobiography. It is also the story of a generation; the generation that shaped the current Ethiopian social and political landscape in a significant way for better or for worse. What started out as a single thread of Hiwot's life weaves into so many lives and illustrates to us the bigger picture. It is a book that shows the collective psyche through the lens of a single individual.
The book is not just a narration of events. It dives into the psychological and philosophical realm of the reasoning behind those actions. Hiwot brings up the questions of personal and ideological ties, the concept of morality, the value of human life, and of beauty and pleasure...In the first three quarters, she illustrates these ideas subtly through the tone of the writing (such as the matter-of-fact tone of discussing deaths of loved ones and breaking of family ties) and in the final quarter of the book, as she was jailed and stripped of her political involvement, which was at the core of her existence and envelops each and every one of her actions, she comes face to face with the truth as an individual. We see her starting to ask the questions she has been avoiding all along and try to come to terms with reality. She asks 'Does the end justify the means?' and contemplates how much Personal responsibility one is to take for the Collective blunder. We see her going from a blind believer to a cynic (or even a nihilist) and back to a believer in her own right. We see her growth as an individual and through that lens we see many failing to do so.
It is a daring biography in that it is honest. The honesty makes it so-very-human. From the feeling of inadequacy she felt the first moment she met Getachew to the point where she decides she had to accept responsibility for the part she played in all the wrong that happened and come to terms with what had come out of the thing she saw as her life's sole purpose; She puts it all on the scale for the reader to see. Even in the Philosophical analysis, I thought it wasn't being done in a self-redemptive attempt but rather in seeking understanding.
The writing is beautiful and almost poetic in certain places although I thought it was odd how the Amharic words were spelled in English (but perhaps they might read better this way for a foreigner). The flow of the narrative was easy to follow. But, there was a point, in the earlier part of the book, where the writer inserted accounts of friends of Getachew's that made the timeframe and narration a little disorienting.
Overall, It was a beautiful, fascinating and worthwhile read!
April 7, 2018
I actually don't often do reviews, but I feel like this book is just going to stick with me for a long time. As a firenje living in Ethiopia, I try to get my hands on as much local literature and history as possible to avoid being the typical foreigner here. So when my fiancé let me borrow his copy of this book, I was eager to start reading it. I had no idea how my emotions would be twisted by this. Hiwot is an excellent writer and her command of English is pretty phenomenal. Her story is even more powerful. Reading this, I hurt when she hurt, I feared when she feared. Despite having no concept of the life she has lived and no ability to relate directly, I was sucked in.
June 16, 2016
I don't know who gave this book 5 stars. Incoherent from beginning to end; piles of fragmented thoughts; worst story-telling; annoying transliteration of Amharic words; bad editing; the purpose of the book is not even clear. Is it about EPRP, Derg, or her lover, or her autobiography? Would she have written it better in Amharic? I don't know...
December 28, 2022
"You will find them at bus stations pretending to read newspapers, telling the time, scratching the tips of their noses. In a cafe, they order either tea or coffee. They whisper among themselves. They look shabby - girls with Afros, netelas, and sneakers, and boys with worn out jeans and sneakers."
- a State official's description of the members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP)
In 1974, the regime of the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, was overthrown in a revolution. Left-wing student movements played a significant part in the revolution, primarily through the vehicle of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (the EPRP). However, soon after the revolution, the military junta - the Derg - seized power. When the EPRP condemned the Derg as standing in the way of a true people's democracy, the stage was set for a bloody conflict. After an ill-fated attempt by the EPRP to assassinate Derg leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1976, the military government unleashed a full-scale war against the EPRP. Thousands of cadres were imprisoned, tortured, executed, and disappeared, in a campaign known as the "Red Terror."
Hiwot Teffera was a young woman who, as an 18-year-old student, was recruited into the ranks of the EPRP. Tower in the Sky is her memoir of the time: it takes the reader through the heady campus politics of the Addis Ababa of 1974, the euphoria accompanying the initial overthrow of Haile Selassie, the EPRP's dream of building a free and egalitarian society (the eponymous "Tower in the Sky"), its gradual descent into doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism in the teeth of the assault by the Derg, carrying on revolutionary activities under intense repression, and finally, after several miraculous escapes, the author's own capture, torture, and nine-year-long imprisonment by the military junta. Reading this book reminded me, at times, of Ibrahim Abdelmeguid's Clouds Over Alexandria, a fictionalised account of the Egyptian student movement of 1973, which suffered a similar fate; the difference, of course, is that Tower in the Sky is a true story.
For a significant part of the book, the protagonist is not only Hiwot herself, but also Getachew Maru, a student-leader of the EPRP, who recruits Hiwot into the party through the means of a Marxist reading circle, mentors her, and eventually becomes her lover. Tower in the Sky is, in some ways, the story of Getachew Maru, and the story of Getachew Maru is the story of the doomed Ethiopian Revolution, and indeed, of all doomed left-wing revolutions. From the beginning, Hiwot portrays Maru as open-minded and free-willed, qualities that are of great use in the initial days of the revolution, but start to become increasingly inconvenient to the EPRP's politburo as the conflict with the Derg intensifies. Maru's public disagreement with the EPRP's policy of urban warfare against the Derg proves to be the last straw: he is taken into custody, interrogated, and finally shot dead, in circumstances that are never fully revealed. Like the great Salvadoran revolutionary poet, Roque Dalton, Maru dies not at the hands of the tyrannical regime that he is fighting, but by his own comrades.
This is a familiar, and familiarly saddening story: of an initially idealistic revolutionary Party that reifies into increasingly authoritarian structures, engages in a series of missteps and mistakes that only lead to further authoritarianism (a vicious circle), and eventually turns on its own. What makes Tower in the Sky particularly poignant, however, is that all of this shatters a very real love between two very real people - Hiwot and Getachew. The intensity of Hiwot's feelings - undimmed through the years - are evident from her choice of epigraph to the book, which are lines from Khalil Gibran:
If in the twilight of memory we should
meet once more, we shall speak again
together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another
dream we shall build another tower in the sky.
This tearing melancholy drapes the pages of Tower in the Sky, turning events, numbers, statistics into the rhythms of joy and pain. We laugh with Hiwot when she describes how the student revolutionaries - the "Revos" - consider romance a frivolous pursuit (and initially, Getachew is not exempt from this), leading couples on the university campus to find sanctuary beside the magnificently-named "kissing pool"; we share her initial heady rush of joining the EPRP and being integrated into its underground activities; we smile conspiratorially when she reveals how she never found Lenin as interesting as Marx, but didn't dare say it to Getachew (who would, ironically, lose his life to the Leninist logic of democratic centralism); we nod in recognition when she writes that Getachew "put an edge on my sensibility"; we hold our breath through the long slow-burn that is their romance, interrupted by the EPRP sending them to different parts of the country for revolutionary work, and by the surveillance and repression of the Derg ("... our love was as underground as the organisation we belonged to"); and the brutal - and untimely - snapping of their relationship with Getachew's murder comes as a numbing shock, a disbelief that is hard to shake off even after you put the book down. So clear, sharp, and *real* is the Getachew of Tower in the Sky, that his loss feels personal.
The poignancy of Tower in the Sky is sharpened by Hiwot's clear-eyed self-awareness of her own intellectual and emotional trajectory. At the height of the revolutionary movement, she writes about how her "wandering soul finally found an abode", and how the struggle was "my present, my future, my life." At the heart of this is her loyalty to the Party - on more than one occasion, she compares her love for Getachew with her love for the Party. But what is striking is that even on Getachew's expulsion - and eventual murder - Hiwot's faith in the Party, although shaken, remains intact. More than once she asks herself if it is even possible for the Party to make a mistake; she lays bare before the reader her own rationalisations ("it's not the Party, just a clique within it"), and her own refusal to acknowledge a fact that would bring her own world-view crumbling down around her.
It is only in the solitude and loneliness of prison - as she hears daily news of the executions and massacres of comrades, thanks to the Party's missteps - that Hiwot's faith in both the Party and doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism breaks. "But my mind connived against my cherished Party," she writes, in one of the most haunting passages of the book, "and slowly I tore up the sacred veil draping my eyes: without illusions, myths, and sacred taboos surrounding it, to my horror, it became just an ordinary bunch of people trying to find their way in the dark." Notably, however, this does not lead her to disown or condemn her own past: Hiwot remains kind to her earlier self, understanding the dream of the tower in the sky, and to a past that she retains respect and admiration for, but she is now able to look at the Party "without nostalgia or regrets." It is a truly remarkably personal journey.
There are parts of this book that read like a thriller: before her eventual incarceration, Hiwot cheats death and capture multiple times: on some occasions through her presence of mind (pretending to be a recently-bereaved wife to avoid detention), and sometimes through sheer luck (avoiding a patrol by a matter of minutes). False identities, fake papers, disguises, police informers, love and loyalty under the most extreme of circumstances, prison life - the book has it all. There are moments of pathos, but also, moments of humour (the old woman-prisoner who sits underneath the volleyball net while the prisoners play, refuses to move, and pricks the ball every time it lands on her, is an image that will never leave me).
But in the end, history, as Auden says, can say alas, but can neither help nor pardon. The generation of the 1970s is often called the Golden Generation, and the Lost Generation, and in the pages of this book, you can see why: the cast of characters that wander onto the stage (and wander off it) are remarkable individuals - fiercely intelligent, empathetic, and caring, with most of them sacrificing everything (including, ultimately, their lives) for that elusive "tower in the sky." And at the end of this book, you are left with a feeling of emptiness and a sense of futility, for how these lives were wasted. As Hiwot describes the feeling of the exile:
"Wherever they lived, many of them became eternal strangers to the world and to themselves. Devoid of dreams and ideals, they lost meaning in the present or the future. They kept chasing the elusive past."
- a State official's description of the members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP)
In 1974, the regime of the Ethiopian Emperor, Haile Selassie, was overthrown in a revolution. Left-wing student movements played a significant part in the revolution, primarily through the vehicle of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (the EPRP). However, soon after the revolution, the military junta - the Derg - seized power. When the EPRP condemned the Derg as standing in the way of a true people's democracy, the stage was set for a bloody conflict. After an ill-fated attempt by the EPRP to assassinate Derg leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1976, the military government unleashed a full-scale war against the EPRP. Thousands of cadres were imprisoned, tortured, executed, and disappeared, in a campaign known as the "Red Terror."
Hiwot Teffera was a young woman who, as an 18-year-old student, was recruited into the ranks of the EPRP. Tower in the Sky is her memoir of the time: it takes the reader through the heady campus politics of the Addis Ababa of 1974, the euphoria accompanying the initial overthrow of Haile Selassie, the EPRP's dream of building a free and egalitarian society (the eponymous "Tower in the Sky"), its gradual descent into doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism in the teeth of the assault by the Derg, carrying on revolutionary activities under intense repression, and finally, after several miraculous escapes, the author's own capture, torture, and nine-year-long imprisonment by the military junta. Reading this book reminded me, at times, of Ibrahim Abdelmeguid's Clouds Over Alexandria, a fictionalised account of the Egyptian student movement of 1973, which suffered a similar fate; the difference, of course, is that Tower in the Sky is a true story.
For a significant part of the book, the protagonist is not only Hiwot herself, but also Getachew Maru, a student-leader of the EPRP, who recruits Hiwot into the party through the means of a Marxist reading circle, mentors her, and eventually becomes her lover. Tower in the Sky is, in some ways, the story of Getachew Maru, and the story of Getachew Maru is the story of the doomed Ethiopian Revolution, and indeed, of all doomed left-wing revolutions. From the beginning, Hiwot portrays Maru as open-minded and free-willed, qualities that are of great use in the initial days of the revolution, but start to become increasingly inconvenient to the EPRP's politburo as the conflict with the Derg intensifies. Maru's public disagreement with the EPRP's policy of urban warfare against the Derg proves to be the last straw: he is taken into custody, interrogated, and finally shot dead, in circumstances that are never fully revealed. Like the great Salvadoran revolutionary poet, Roque Dalton, Maru dies not at the hands of the tyrannical regime that he is fighting, but by his own comrades.
This is a familiar, and familiarly saddening story: of an initially idealistic revolutionary Party that reifies into increasingly authoritarian structures, engages in a series of missteps and mistakes that only lead to further authoritarianism (a vicious circle), and eventually turns on its own. What makes Tower in the Sky particularly poignant, however, is that all of this shatters a very real love between two very real people - Hiwot and Getachew. The intensity of Hiwot's feelings - undimmed through the years - are evident from her choice of epigraph to the book, which are lines from Khalil Gibran:
If in the twilight of memory we should
meet once more, we shall speak again
together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another
dream we shall build another tower in the sky.
This tearing melancholy drapes the pages of Tower in the Sky, turning events, numbers, statistics into the rhythms of joy and pain. We laugh with Hiwot when she describes how the student revolutionaries - the "Revos" - consider romance a frivolous pursuit (and initially, Getachew is not exempt from this), leading couples on the university campus to find sanctuary beside the magnificently-named "kissing pool"; we share her initial heady rush of joining the EPRP and being integrated into its underground activities; we smile conspiratorially when she reveals how she never found Lenin as interesting as Marx, but didn't dare say it to Getachew (who would, ironically, lose his life to the Leninist logic of democratic centralism); we nod in recognition when she writes that Getachew "put an edge on my sensibility"; we hold our breath through the long slow-burn that is their romance, interrupted by the EPRP sending them to different parts of the country for revolutionary work, and by the surveillance and repression of the Derg ("... our love was as underground as the organisation we belonged to"); and the brutal - and untimely - snapping of their relationship with Getachew's murder comes as a numbing shock, a disbelief that is hard to shake off even after you put the book down. So clear, sharp, and *real* is the Getachew of Tower in the Sky, that his loss feels personal.
The poignancy of Tower in the Sky is sharpened by Hiwot's clear-eyed self-awareness of her own intellectual and emotional trajectory. At the height of the revolutionary movement, she writes about how her "wandering soul finally found an abode", and how the struggle was "my present, my future, my life." At the heart of this is her loyalty to the Party - on more than one occasion, she compares her love for Getachew with her love for the Party. But what is striking is that even on Getachew's expulsion - and eventual murder - Hiwot's faith in the Party, although shaken, remains intact. More than once she asks herself if it is even possible for the Party to make a mistake; she lays bare before the reader her own rationalisations ("it's not the Party, just a clique within it"), and her own refusal to acknowledge a fact that would bring her own world-view crumbling down around her.
It is only in the solitude and loneliness of prison - as she hears daily news of the executions and massacres of comrades, thanks to the Party's missteps - that Hiwot's faith in both the Party and doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism breaks. "But my mind connived against my cherished Party," she writes, in one of the most haunting passages of the book, "and slowly I tore up the sacred veil draping my eyes: without illusions, myths, and sacred taboos surrounding it, to my horror, it became just an ordinary bunch of people trying to find their way in the dark." Notably, however, this does not lead her to disown or condemn her own past: Hiwot remains kind to her earlier self, understanding the dream of the tower in the sky, and to a past that she retains respect and admiration for, but she is now able to look at the Party "without nostalgia or regrets." It is a truly remarkably personal journey.
There are parts of this book that read like a thriller: before her eventual incarceration, Hiwot cheats death and capture multiple times: on some occasions through her presence of mind (pretending to be a recently-bereaved wife to avoid detention), and sometimes through sheer luck (avoiding a patrol by a matter of minutes). False identities, fake papers, disguises, police informers, love and loyalty under the most extreme of circumstances, prison life - the book has it all. There are moments of pathos, but also, moments of humour (the old woman-prisoner who sits underneath the volleyball net while the prisoners play, refuses to move, and pricks the ball every time it lands on her, is an image that will never leave me).
But in the end, history, as Auden says, can say alas, but can neither help nor pardon. The generation of the 1970s is often called the Golden Generation, and the Lost Generation, and in the pages of this book, you can see why: the cast of characters that wander onto the stage (and wander off it) are remarkable individuals - fiercely intelligent, empathetic, and caring, with most of them sacrificing everything (including, ultimately, their lives) for that elusive "tower in the sky." And at the end of this book, you are left with a feeling of emptiness and a sense of futility, for how these lives were wasted. As Hiwot describes the feeling of the exile:
"Wherever they lived, many of them became eternal strangers to the world and to themselves. Devoid of dreams and ideals, they lost meaning in the present or the future. They kept chasing the elusive past."
January 11, 2017
This book has great detail of what happened in the militarily regime , the different factions and how opposition elements worked their way out in the struggle for democracy. The book is written around the story of a girl as part of one revolutionary party in Ethiopia by emphasizing her participation in the struggle, her love affair and personal reflections of that turbulent period of the derg regime. It is a good resource for those who would like to dig further and research more on topics of the Military era in Ethiopia. happy new year!!
December 23, 2024
Incredibly moving autobiography of someone that was a part of the ethiopian student movement. I feel like the study of history can sometimes lack humanity, as we learn about things from a detached perspective, aiming for an objective truth, which is why autobiographies can be an incredible way to make up for that. Helped me gain an understanding of how the political organisations operated as well as the dynamics between the different groups and what ultimately led to the breakdown of these revolutionary parties.
May 14, 2014
My best friend (Ethiopian - born & raised) recommended this book around Labor Day in 2014, somehow a coincidence relating to the events in the book about labor relations.
I was impressed by the life in Addis in the early 1970s from the author's perspective. She portrays a golden age around campus and life in general. What of the beautiful life around the 'Kissing Pool' outside Ras Mekonen Hall and the Cinemas and Discos they raved with her friends in Sidist Kilo (Someone take me to the Love street, please)!
When I visited Ethiopia for the first time in 2013, that life seemed to be back with some special vengeance.
It is the darkness between the two relatively rosy eras of this great country that the author seeks to unmask. The underlying dynamics of what poisoned the social awakening of a people to the extremes of barbarism and bloodshed during the Derg regime. From the social, to the political to the mythical to the religious and the psychological, one gets a coherent idea of betrayal during political transitions.
It is a great read though I have my reservations with how the author describes emotions in plurality (we were ALL sad, we were ALL crying after the news, we were ALL ...) which makes some emotional moments, like when they lose key characters to the ever hovering Grim Reaper, feel less convincing. The cold emotions and moments called for better expressions. Maybe she tried to portray death then as 'normalized' but losing a friend deserves more than a sentence. At least a separate paragraph.
Though not a major issue, it would have brought the story closer home if she told us more about her nights with Getachew than 'we booked a room and he saw me off to a taxi following morning'...sounds rehearsed to me. The joke about Mengistu being an overdose of evil did some trick on cooling the tension that through many pages made it feel out of touch with reality (deadly as it could have been, it surely didn't lack personal moments).
Since her very tough story Ethiopia has undergone crazy moments like Meles taking over leadership, the Eritrean secession, his death in 2012 and succession by Hailemariam. It would be interesting to understand how betray survives and the means Meles used to keep his regime under check.
It is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the Lost Decades in Africa. True, Ethiopia might never have been colonized in the classical sense of the word but the Derg regime pushed the country to cannibalise itself.
I was impressed by the life in Addis in the early 1970s from the author's perspective. She portrays a golden age around campus and life in general. What of the beautiful life around the 'Kissing Pool' outside Ras Mekonen Hall and the Cinemas and Discos they raved with her friends in Sidist Kilo (Someone take me to the Love street, please)!
When I visited Ethiopia for the first time in 2013, that life seemed to be back with some special vengeance.
It is the darkness between the two relatively rosy eras of this great country that the author seeks to unmask. The underlying dynamics of what poisoned the social awakening of a people to the extremes of barbarism and bloodshed during the Derg regime. From the social, to the political to the mythical to the religious and the psychological, one gets a coherent idea of betrayal during political transitions.
It is a great read though I have my reservations with how the author describes emotions in plurality (we were ALL sad, we were ALL crying after the news, we were ALL ...) which makes some emotional moments, like when they lose key characters to the ever hovering Grim Reaper, feel less convincing. The cold emotions and moments called for better expressions. Maybe she tried to portray death then as 'normalized' but losing a friend deserves more than a sentence. At least a separate paragraph.
Though not a major issue, it would have brought the story closer home if she told us more about her nights with Getachew than 'we booked a room and he saw me off to a taxi following morning'...sounds rehearsed to me. The joke about Mengistu being an overdose of evil did some trick on cooling the tension that through many pages made it feel out of touch with reality (deadly as it could have been, it surely didn't lack personal moments).
Since her very tough story Ethiopia has undergone crazy moments like Meles taking over leadership, the Eritrean secession, his death in 2012 and succession by Hailemariam. It would be interesting to understand how betray survives and the means Meles used to keep his regime under check.
It is a necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the Lost Decades in Africa. True, Ethiopia might never have been colonized in the classical sense of the word but the Derg regime pushed the country to cannibalise itself.
February 13, 2015
Hiwot Tefera a brilliant women who miraculously survived multiple death threat from the blood thirsty death squads of the Derg, In her indisputable masterpiece TOWER IN THE SKY accurately monument-ed a new historical dimension to the history of the EPRP's youth league. The unbiased approach of the book to the raw historical facts and in-depth subtle philosophical analysis on the issue of group thinking, crowed mentality and its subsequent ramifications vs the importance of individual freedom of thinking has made TOWER IN THE SKY subtle and educational. Her writing style has an immense power to engage and captivate any reader right from the beginning to the end. No doubt Hiwot's brilliant first account memoir will remain in the history of Ethiopia as a living evidence for what kind of brave , genuine, altruistic, ambitious and brightly minded young people there had been lost. After reading her book I concluded the attempt to adapt the Godless theory of Marx, Lenin or Mao as responsible for the fatal demise of that “Golden Generation”. The societal, economic and political theory of Marxism basically developed based on the reality in Europe which I think had nothing to do with Ethiopia. Had it been a realistic native alternate political solutions devised and attempted, Ethiopia would have still retain its unique social, cultural and religious values while making progress in all aspects of the countries development goal. more reviews of the book can be found at ethioreaders.com
April 14, 2015
The book is very explanatory of the situation in Ethiopia starting from the Hailesellasie regime up to the Derg. It shows the commitment of that generation to build a utopia. It shows the effort of EPRP and other parties at the time to challenge the Derg regime and even their mistakes along the way.
December 11, 2021
ውድድድ አድርጌው ነው ያለቀው : ሀዘኗን ብሶቷን ብቻ አልፃፈችልኝምና ::
ጌታቸው ማሩ ሞቶም መቀጠሏ የብርታቷን የጥንካሬዋን ልክ አሳየኝ እንጂ :ሞቶም ታስራም እራሷን ያነሳችበት መንገድ ያመነችበት ብዙ የታገለችበትን የፓርቲውን እንቅስቃሴ ከራሷ የልየችበትና መራር ሆና እንዳትቀር እያታዎቿን የሞርደችበት መንገድ ስለ ኢሃፓ እንዳነብ እንዳውቅ አጏጏችኝ ::
ሂወት ምሬቷን ብቻ አልፃፈችም ያቀደችው ስላልተሳካ እንዲያስተምራት እንጂ እንዲያማርራት አልፈቀደችም ::
ምንአልባት ይህ ይሆን አላማው ? እንደዛ የለፋችለት ??
ጌታቸው ማሩ ሞቶም መቀጠሏ የብርታቷን የጥንካሬዋን ልክ አሳየኝ እንጂ :ሞቶም ታስራም እራሷን ያነሳችበት መንገድ ያመነችበት ብዙ የታገለችበትን የፓርቲውን እንቅስቃሴ ከራሷ የልየችበትና መራር ሆና እንዳትቀር እያታዎቿን የሞርደችበት መንገድ ስለ ኢሃፓ እንዳነብ እንዳውቅ አጏጏችኝ ::
ሂወት ምሬቷን ብቻ አልፃፈችም ያቀደችው ስላልተሳካ እንዲያስተምራት እንጂ እንዲያማርራት አልፈቀደችም ::
ምንአልባት ይህ ይሆን አላማው ? እንደዛ የለፋችለት ??
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2014
July 1, 2014: This is a fine book and should be better known than it is.
I wrote a blog-post about it that you can read by clicking on the thumbnail photo to the left and scrolling down to my blog.
I wrote a blog-post about it that you can read by clicking on the thumbnail photo to the left and scrolling down to my blog.
Read
February 19, 2025No rating because I don't rate books (it is simply too hard).
I'm so glad Hiwot recognized the importance of her story and put pen to paper to write about it. This is the story of a young, ill girl that found purpose through revolution, through complete dedication to a cause, to the Party. This is synonymous with her love for Getachew, who introduced her to revolutionary thought and who had endless love for his comrades, even when they had diverging opinions and right up until the moment they killed him. It's astounding that that sort of unjust violence could come from a Party meant to stand up to the extreme unjust violence of the Derg. Hiwot describes the murder of so many that she knew in the EPRP at the hands of the Derg- except Getachew. The great love of her life was murdered by the Party itself. This obviously shook Hiwot's moral and philosophical foundation, as her life at that point was deeply entangled with and lived for the Party.
Eventually, she is imprisoned for her involvement and in the eight years she spends in prison, her philosophy changes. She witnesses and experiences a lot of cruelty, including torture and incredibly substandard conditions. But she sees how humanity blossomed anyways, how they made a small life for themselves. She begins to discard her belief in utopian thinking and even collective and organized effort, believing instead in the power of individuals and addressing immediate need. I don't quite land in the same place as her; I don't think utopian thinking has no place and in fact think much of what she described regarding prisoners creating humanity for themselves happened through collective and organized effort. But I do think that this serves as an important cautionary tale regarding not putting ideals before people, about protecting and serving immediate need while striving for a better future, and not believing in the infallibility of any one group of peope. Anyone interested in revolutionary work must learn from revolutions past, and as someone Ethiopian, it is incredibly important for me to learn from my own history. And I'm so glad I was able to learn specifically from Hiwot's story.
I'm so glad Hiwot recognized the importance of her story and put pen to paper to write about it. This is the story of a young, ill girl that found purpose through revolution, through complete dedication to a cause, to the Party. This is synonymous with her love for Getachew, who introduced her to revolutionary thought and who had endless love for his comrades, even when they had diverging opinions and right up until the moment they killed him. It's astounding that that sort of unjust violence could come from a Party meant to stand up to the extreme unjust violence of the Derg. Hiwot describes the murder of so many that she knew in the EPRP at the hands of the Derg- except Getachew. The great love of her life was murdered by the Party itself. This obviously shook Hiwot's moral and philosophical foundation, as her life at that point was deeply entangled with and lived for the Party.
Eventually, she is imprisoned for her involvement and in the eight years she spends in prison, her philosophy changes. She witnesses and experiences a lot of cruelty, including torture and incredibly substandard conditions. But she sees how humanity blossomed anyways, how they made a small life for themselves. She begins to discard her belief in utopian thinking and even collective and organized effort, believing instead in the power of individuals and addressing immediate need. I don't quite land in the same place as her; I don't think utopian thinking has no place and in fact think much of what she described regarding prisoners creating humanity for themselves happened through collective and organized effort. But I do think that this serves as an important cautionary tale regarding not putting ideals before people, about protecting and serving immediate need while striving for a better future, and not believing in the infallibility of any one group of peope. Anyone interested in revolutionary work must learn from revolutions past, and as someone Ethiopian, it is incredibly important for me to learn from my own history. And I'm so glad I was able to learn specifically from Hiwot's story.
September 28, 2025
An incredible book detailing Hiwot’s bravery, courage, and resilience during such a complex and cruel time of Ethiopia’s history. When I first went to Addis in the summer of 2024, I knew next to nothing about Ethiopia’s culture, history, or politics. I learned a lot from the wonderfully open and curious friends I made there, and was eager to learn more with the recommendation of this book.
Hiwot gives a very honest, vulnerable, and personal account of events across many years, bringing depth and reflection to very brutal realities. Reading her story made me seek out more about the Derg, other resistance movements, and even today’s struggles and persistent ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia.
The realization and turmoil she goes through with distancing herself from the party was incredibly raw, especially given all she lost and how tied her identity was to the party. She grapples with the idealism that many communist movements seem to hold, and the error in abandoning your ethics when claiming “the means justify the ends.” There are also some beautiful and funny passages that I related to a lot, like when Hiwot went to serve as a teacher early in the book or how she would describe her relationships with her fellow prisoners. The ending section of the book and the way Hiwot tackles questions of what it means to be human and finds strength and meaning in her suffering reminds me a lot of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It makes me wonder if it is one she’s read, because she describes quite a few interesting books and how they shaped and painted her experience in prison.
So much pain and history packed into these pages, and I feel lucky to have read Hiwot’s story. I hope more people are able to read it too.
Hiwot gives a very honest, vulnerable, and personal account of events across many years, bringing depth and reflection to very brutal realities. Reading her story made me seek out more about the Derg, other resistance movements, and even today’s struggles and persistent ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia.
The realization and turmoil she goes through with distancing herself from the party was incredibly raw, especially given all she lost and how tied her identity was to the party. She grapples with the idealism that many communist movements seem to hold, and the error in abandoning your ethics when claiming “the means justify the ends.” There are also some beautiful and funny passages that I related to a lot, like when Hiwot went to serve as a teacher early in the book or how she would describe her relationships with her fellow prisoners. The ending section of the book and the way Hiwot tackles questions of what it means to be human and finds strength and meaning in her suffering reminds me a lot of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It makes me wonder if it is one she’s read, because she describes quite a few interesting books and how they shaped and painted her experience in prison.
So much pain and history packed into these pages, and I feel lucky to have read Hiwot’s story. I hope more people are able to read it too.
September 22, 2025
Her book is a testament to love, bravery, and sacrifice; it is more than just words. Even if it meant putting her own life in danger, she remained fearless in politics. When others turned away from Getachew Maru, she stood up for his truth and demonstrated his innocence. What most inspires me is how her soul never ceased to shine. I know she is a brave woman, a true lover, and she is always willing to start over without fear. This story is about her lovely heart as much as it is about Getachew maru.
September 28, 2023
I can't admire this book enough, the courage they have during Derg regim and their endurance to keep their aim is beyond me. It's because that generation has been wiped that we are suffering right now, I believe they could have made a better generation than us if they were alive. A wholesome Era fr.
November 27, 2020
Simple and personal story telling which I found to be the best way to understand the events of that era. The stories were both inspiring and heartbreaking and made me envision an Ethiopia and Ethiopians I did not know existed. Captivating read.
May 8, 2024
Sjukt interessant om studentbevegelsen i Etiopia på 70-tallet, og kampen mot det brutale Derg regime
July 14, 2014
As an Ethiopian I am very proud of you. You are daring, brave super women. Your trip to Mekele made my hear jump! Not only that you made it & also manage to record history. From the story What made me really sad is the death of Getachew. How could one does such kind of evil thing when at the same time say we are struggling to provide freedom to people?
Want to read
February 2, 2015Like to read our Basic and unforgottable history
August 12, 2014
Its one of the best books that I have ever read.
August 6, 2015
great book
Want to read
July 17, 2017I need to read this book can I get the PDF.
best
best
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