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Ciao Asmara
Asmara is the capital of Eritrea - a surreally Italian city at the centre of an ex-Italian colony that has been at war with its neighbour, Ethiopia (who claims sovereignty over Eritrea), for over ten years. Amidst broken palaces (built by the late Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie), nomadic desert encampments and war-torn towns, Justin Hill found a god-fearing people remarkably resistant to everything fate has thrown at them. This book is a tribute to their resilience.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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87 people want to read
About the author
Justin Hill
10 books112 followers Justin is an English novelist whose work has twice been nominated for the Man Booker Prize. He was born in Freeport, Grand Bahama Island in 1971 and was brought up in York. He was educated at St Peter's School, York, and was a member of St Cuthbert's Society, Durham University.
He worked for seven years as a volunteer with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in rural China and Africa, before returning home to Yorkshire in 1999. His internationally acclaimed first novel, The Drink and Dream Teahouse, won the 2003 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and a 2002 Betty Trask Award, and banned by the government in China. It was also picked by the Washington Post as one of the Top Novels of 2001.
His second novel, Passing Under Heaven, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Encore Award. The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph both picked it for their Christmas Recommended Reads in 2005.
Ciao Asmara, a factual account of his time in Eritrea, was shortlisted for the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.
In December 2009, he signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown, to publish his Conquest Series.
His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
He worked for seven years as a volunteer with VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) in rural China and Africa, before returning home to Yorkshire in 1999. His internationally acclaimed first novel, The Drink and Dream Teahouse, won the 2003 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and a 2002 Betty Trask Award, and banned by the government in China. It was also picked by the Washington Post as one of the Top Novels of 2001.
His second novel, Passing Under Heaven, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Encore Award. The Independent on Sunday and Sunday Telegraph both picked it for their Christmas Recommended Reads in 2005.
Ciao Asmara, a factual account of his time in Eritrea, was shortlisted for the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award.
In December 2009, he signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown, to publish his Conquest Series.
His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 18, 2021
The strife between Ethiopia and Eritrea is a heartbreak and Justin Hill tells his story with honesty and rawness. Some of his language is just beautiful…
“As we talked the day shrank to a rind of turquoise along the horizon. The color drained down the funnel of the sunset, and the stars came out on a coal-black background, large and white and beaming: not a paltry twinkle in sight.”
There are also scenes of torture and horrors that will haunt me interminably. There is cruelty and misunderstanding and senseless waste and loss that only war can be responsible for.
“As we talked the day shrank to a rind of turquoise along the horizon. The color drained down the funnel of the sunset, and the stars came out on a coal-black background, large and white and beaming: not a paltry twinkle in sight.”
There are also scenes of torture and horrors that will haunt me interminably. There is cruelty and misunderstanding and senseless waste and loss that only war can be responsible for.
January 26, 2016
An interesting account of the author's time as an English teacher in Eretria. The book's not just a personal account, however. It's also a history of Eretria's conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia - quite a potted history, admittedly, but very readable and deeply horrifying. I finished this book even more convinced than usual of my general ignorance; I'd no idea at all of what had happened there.
September 8, 2020
I read this book for a number of reasons. First of all I knew Justin Hill when he was a very young VSO volunteer English teacher in China. I was the Field Officer responsible for the volunteers in Shanxi, the province where Justin was sent to teach. Tall, handsome, blond curls, very young, but then already deeply interested in the world around him and serious about it. His life since then has obviously been an adventure and he has become a very good writer.
Second reason for reading this book was that in the past year I was working in a schoolclass at a primary school in Holland especially for children from around the world who have come to live in Holland. They all come to this class to learn Dutch before moving on to regular schoolclasses. It's a lovely mix of children from all over the world: among others well-off kids with highly educated parents from Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Iran, children of illiterate Chinese restaurant cooks, Syrian refugees, and children from Eritrea. I realized I knew nothing about Eritrea. So I picked up this book.
Justin Hill writes very well. Some scenes are excellent. The encounter with the young prostitute, being chased by a crazed guy with his pants round his ankles, slaughtering a goat... Reading his stories of Eritrea, I was there, and I could relate to the people. I recognised the sharp, quick, hard (don't know how to describe it) beauty of the people, I recognise it in the Eritrean children I know here in Holland. I found the history complex and hard to understand and to follow what happened and why, but maybe that's the point. Their wars and fighting seem pointless, purely destructive, but at the same time, their only real raison d' être. I will have to look up some more recent history to understand why the children I know are here now, and how come they could still spend their summer holidays back in Eritrea. Eyes shining on their return with memories of their beloved country.
Second reason for reading this book was that in the past year I was working in a schoolclass at a primary school in Holland especially for children from around the world who have come to live in Holland. They all come to this class to learn Dutch before moving on to regular schoolclasses. It's a lovely mix of children from all over the world: among others well-off kids with highly educated parents from Brazil, South Africa, Japan, Iran, children of illiterate Chinese restaurant cooks, Syrian refugees, and children from Eritrea. I realized I knew nothing about Eritrea. So I picked up this book.
Justin Hill writes very well. Some scenes are excellent. The encounter with the young prostitute, being chased by a crazed guy with his pants round his ankles, slaughtering a goat... Reading his stories of Eritrea, I was there, and I could relate to the people. I recognised the sharp, quick, hard (don't know how to describe it) beauty of the people, I recognise it in the Eritrean children I know here in Holland. I found the history complex and hard to understand and to follow what happened and why, but maybe that's the point. Their wars and fighting seem pointless, purely destructive, but at the same time, their only real raison d' être. I will have to look up some more recent history to understand why the children I know are here now, and how come they could still spend their summer holidays back in Eritrea. Eyes shining on their return with memories of their beloved country.
July 31, 2011
Eritrea, 1993. At the end of a 30 year war with Ethopia, which it had been given to by the US in return for summat or other in the best interests of the US. A volunteer teacher arrives from England. I knew less than jack shit about the history of Eritrea, although I did know where it was cos there's a Quaker charity at work there. Post-independence they asked for Aid. They then vetod the offers if they were linked to industry or defence contracts, prospecting for oil or gold, those initiatives that spent most of the "Aid " on ex-pat salaries or that was channelled back to the country of origin in any other way. So far so good. The ideals of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front were remarkable and they worked on educating the masses throughout the struggle. Sadly, they could not sustain the impetus in the peace. The population sat back and waited, in vain, for the land of milk and honey to materialise. At the end of the book the author was airlifted out along with all the other ex-pats when war broke out again.
There's a passage in the book that relates to the author coming across a "tank graveyard". It reads: "I thought of the skill and education and effort that had gone into producing these monsters. All of them were cleverly designed and lovingly created by intelligent people in the USA or in European countries. They were a testament to the amount of money the world powers are prepared to invest in bolstering their strategic interests. A testament to the ingenuity and skill the world invests in war." Quite! Pointless, counter-productive and heavily subsidised industries focused on killing as many of our fellow man as possible in the shortest length of time. The sooner the species renders itself extinct........."
There's a passage in the book that relates to the author coming across a "tank graveyard". It reads: "I thought of the skill and education and effort that had gone into producing these monsters. All of them were cleverly designed and lovingly created by intelligent people in the USA or in European countries. They were a testament to the amount of money the world powers are prepared to invest in bolstering their strategic interests. A testament to the ingenuity and skill the world invests in war." Quite! Pointless, counter-productive and heavily subsidised industries focused on killing as many of our fellow man as possible in the shortest length of time. The sooner the species renders itself extinct........."
April 14, 2017
Тази книжка събуди интереса ми към Еритрея!
November 9, 2025
I really enjoyed this read. Based on a true story there aren’t a lot of stories or books set in Eritrea, and this book is very descriptive and tells a point of view story from a foreigner leading up to the Eritrean-Ethiopian war that began in 1998.
Want to Read
February 11, 2021Eritrea
November 30, 2013
Looking at a map of Africa, this country with so much coast line should be prime real estate. There should be harbors, hotels and snorkeling galore. Unfortunately, what it has had has been war. Maybe even more to come.
Last year I read Michela Wong's "I Didn't Do It For You" which details Eritrea's very sad history. Justin Hill's "Ciao Asmara" brings the country much more to life. His light prose style belies strong content and incisive observations.
Through his experiences teaching (teachers chase the students into the classrooms with sticks; class size may be 75 students; with only a few rooms schools have 2 shifts) making friends among the those from "The Field" (who seem to have something like a post partum depression) and meeting various long and short term travelers (from those studying rare fish to those seeking a retirement home), you learn what it is like in the aftermath of a 30 year war. Not only have the people been physically and emotionally damaged, education is hard to come by, and even if you have it, with the economy in shambles, you can't use it. Those who are best off are those with relatives abroad and the veterans who have managed to secure gov't jobs.
The book has some photos that leave you wanting more. You can get more elsewhere on the net (esp. the Art Deco buildings) by searching Eritrea.
The description of Hill's evacuation is great ("Don't jerk me around!" "Fill out the BLUE FORMS!" "I can't deal with this.") and how luggage maximums are reduced by the hour.
If, like me, you're like "travel" books that introduce you to different people more than the food or sites, this book is for you. Other good reads describing day to day life include South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China, Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island and the The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca.
Last year I read Michela Wong's "I Didn't Do It For You" which details Eritrea's very sad history. Justin Hill's "Ciao Asmara" brings the country much more to life. His light prose style belies strong content and incisive observations.
Through his experiences teaching (teachers chase the students into the classrooms with sticks; class size may be 75 students; with only a few rooms schools have 2 shifts) making friends among the those from "The Field" (who seem to have something like a post partum depression) and meeting various long and short term travelers (from those studying rare fish to those seeking a retirement home), you learn what it is like in the aftermath of a 30 year war. Not only have the people been physically and emotionally damaged, education is hard to come by, and even if you have it, with the economy in shambles, you can't use it. Those who are best off are those with relatives abroad and the veterans who have managed to secure gov't jobs.
The book has some photos that leave you wanting more. You can get more elsewhere on the net (esp. the Art Deco buildings) by searching Eritrea.
The description of Hill's evacuation is great ("Don't jerk me around!" "Fill out the BLUE FORMS!" "I can't deal with this.") and how luggage maximums are reduced by the hour.
If, like me, you're like "travel" books that introduce you to different people more than the food or sites, this book is for you. Other good reads describing day to day life include South of the Clouds: Exploring the Hidden Realms of China, Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island and the The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca.
February 2, 2020
Instead of calling this work Ciao Asmara it should been titled either Ciao Keren, or Ciao Eritrea. Keren is the town where the author spent two years as a British volunteer teacher. There is nothing in this book about Asmara, and no mention of the capital city about which I was interested. Otherwise, this is yet another non-fiction attempt (marketed as fiction, probably) to explain Eritrea and the horrible, near continuous conflicts with Ethiopia that racked it for year after year as seen through the eyes of this academic. Keren, or what was left of it, some 50 miles from Asmara is a semi-desert isolated town ringed by dark granite mountains. It hardly passed for a town, let alone a functioning city. The backdrop is interesting but there is little depth here likely because there is so little of interest to actually describe. There are long asides where the author ventures into the hinterlands with a friend and these are absorbing for a few pages, but there is too much detail about the country's political backstory, the military subjugation under the Ethiopian boot and the overnight re-ignited war that caused the author's precipitous departure. Disappointing.
August 20, 2007
I noticed this book by chance on a library shelf while searching specifically for something else; it looked interesting, so I got it out as well. Pretty comprehensive look at post-independence Eritrea at a grasp-able level, including photos. Would make a great book to take along while traveling, etc.
October 27, 2016
This book was a little one sided but knowing zilch about Eritrea I found It accessible and most helpful. It made me worry when I was in Keren reflecting on his walk home, which I can confirm is often strange in Eritrea due to frequent power failures! Worth a shout if looking for a cultural travel book opposed to anything in depth.
August 8, 2015
Written by a Brit who worked as a schoolteacher in Eritrea. Mostly consists of vignettes describing people he encountered, with just enough history to give context - kind of an impressionistic record of his experiences.
May 4, 2025
Justin Hill is a remarkably profound writer, and his writing about my people was beautiful. It felt like the stories that my parents tell me constantly about the days after independence and why they're so fiercely proud of Eritrea.
Thank you, Justin Hill for writing this!
September 28, 2008
A glimpse into the life and history of Eritrea - and its continuous struggles with Ethiopia.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews