The lure of historical fiction is its delicate blend of facts and imagination. It’s about reconstructing the past through real and imaginary characters and events. It’s writing history with feelings. In Money, Blood and Conscience , David Steinman, who describes himself as an “international revolutionary”, is trying to do just that.
Moral battle
The country he’s picked for his debut novel is Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation where Steinman served as a foreign adviser to its democracy movement in 2004-05. The period he’s chosen for the novel is perhaps the most interesting and happening time in the country’s post-war history — from the late 1980s when Ethiopia was under a Marxist dictatorship to the
death of its first post-Marxist leader, Meles Zenawi. During his period, Ethiopia, like most other African countries, had gone through several crises — civil war, fall of the Derg, the Marxist military regime, rise of Zenawi as a new strongman, systemic violence against the Amharas and Oromos, etc. It’s this historical setting that makes the book interesting even before one starts reading it.
Buddy Schwartz, an idealistic American television producer who’s in a moral battle with himself, is Steinman’s main protagonist. The story unfolds in a simple, linear narrative. Buddy wants to do something more than his popular television programme. This restlessness leads him to Ethiopia in the 1980s to make a documentary. The impoverished country is ruled by Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Derg with support from the Soviet Union. The Derg is also fighting civil uprisings in several parts of the country and its most dominant enemy is the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), led by the young, charismatic Meles Zenawi.
In the hunger-stricken, war-ravaged villages of northern Ethiopian highlands, Buddy meets Zenawi and his 22-year-old propaganda officer, Hanna Ashete. Shaken by what he saw in the TPLF-held territories, Buddy founds a charity, Help Ethiopia, with the goal of feeding its poor. The TPLF becomes his host, and after the rebels capture power in 1991, Buddy expands his operations in the country with the blessings of the Zenawi government.
It’s complicated
In essence, Money, Blood and Conscience is the story of three people — Buddy the charity businessman, Hanna the rebel and Zenawi the ruler. Their relationship is complex. Buddy, though he took the plunge out of moral concerns, emerges as someone who doesn’t risk his operations in Ethiopia for political criticisms. Buddy knows what’s happening in the country. He saw, in his own words, “the burned villages in Oromia” and “demonstrators with bullet holes in their head”. But he continues to endorse Prime Minister Zenawi. On the other side, Zenawi is the new Mengistu. His Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front is the new Derg.
But the controversial former Ethiopian Prime Minister is unapologetic throughout the novel. Even in their last meeting, he tells Buddy he does things that are required to run a country like Ethiopia. “Extreme problems require extreme remedies”.
Hanna is the most interesting character. She’s a revolutionary whose father was killed by the Mengistu regime. She’s driven by the passion to do something for Ethiopia. She falls in love with Buddy, marries him, moves to the U.S. But the rebel within Hanna can’t rest. Hanna represents Ethiopia’s hope and resistance — both blossoming and fading in the novel.
For a novice to Ethiopian political history, Money, Blood and Conscience is at least an introduction. But it neither goes deeper into Ethiopia’s complexities nor builds strong characters and relationships that could move the reader.
There are long descriptions of historical events such as the controversial 2005 election, but those details are already reported. What’s lost amid a jungle of information and repeated travel details is a strong emotional connect. Conversations are mostly lame, characters are ambivalent with lack of moral clarity, and the reader is left unconvinced. At the end, what’s Ethiopia’s problem? Ethnic tensions? The political system? Or just one man, Prime Minister Zenawi? You don’t know!
Money, Blood and Conscience; David Steinman, Free Planet Publishing, ₹1,894
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
