by Charlotte Schiander Gray (Author)

In Stories from Ethiopia, Charlotte Schiander Gray deftly presents the trials and the delights of life in Ethiopia. The sharp aroma of roasting coffee, the cascades of bougainvillea, the press of the streets, the cool of a compound, the buzz of flies, and the incense of Coptic churches are all here in a series of swiftly sketched vignettes, old and new. In fourteen tales, each revealing a new facet of a glorious story and a proud people, we catch a sweep glimpse of Abyssinian history and see encounters with outsiders, real and imagined: Early Portuguese explorers casting out for the rumored land of Prester John. The British expeditionary force that came to free the shackled prisoners of the mad King Tewodros. The acquisitive Italians, angling for a colonial prize in the splendor of the court of Menelik and his consort. Then the fading, doomed pageantry of Haile Selassie's proud resistance to Mussolini. On a more intimate scale, we edge up to the present, with stories of yearning: an injured beggar befriends a wealthy aid worker through the window of her fancy European car; the longing of the lover whose sweetheart left him for America and a marriage of convenience. Gray has a keen eye and a deep sympathy for her subject. This richly imagined collection is a tour de force.

Author Biography

Charlotte Schiander Gray, born in Denmark, began to travel widely at a young age; she has been journal writing since twelve years of age. In 1968 she left her study of Danish and Russian at the University of Copenhagen, to go to California with her husband Kenneth Gray. Ten years later, after earning her PhD in Scandinavian Languages and Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, she accompanied her husband to Yemen, and remained overseas with her growing family for many years. She continued publishing academic articles and book reviews of Scandinavian literature, and while in India, wrote a book on the Danish author Klaus Rifbjerg. She taught at a women's college in Khartoum while in Sudan. Returning to California, Charlotte taught literature at UC Berkeley Extension and volunteered for the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library, while raising three sons. She spent fifteen years writing fictional stories of her life in foreign countries, and spends the summer months in her second home on the Danish island of Ærø.

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