Novel · A way to begin
The Conscript
ሓደ ዛንታ
Ghebreyesus Hailu · 1950
Synopsis
Tuquabo, only son of a well-off family of Italian Eritrea, is won over by the propaganda and the songs celebrating the war in Libya, and enlists as an ascari in the colonial troops. He discovers the scorching desert, conscripts without shoes, incompetent Italian officers who treat their soldiers like animals, and gradually understands that he is fighting in another man's war, against men defending their own country.
Context
This short novel was written in 1927, when its author was twenty-one; it appeared in Asmara only in 1950, delayed, according to a review of its Italian translation, by colonial censorship, and is regarded as the first of its kind in this language. Ghirmai Negash translated it into English for Ohio University Press, with an introduction by Laura Chrisman; an Arabic translation has appeared for Libyan readers, and an Italian translation, L'ascaro, in Naples in 2023. There is no French translation.
Who it is for
A short novel, some sixty pages, with a direct, unadorned narrative; it can be read in English or in Italian.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the first novel in Tigrinya; it tells of Italy's colonial war in Libya through an Eritrean ascari conscripted to fight the Libyan resistance, and its English translation is subtitled "A Novel of Libya's Anticolonial War".
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