Aida Edemariam

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Aida Edemariam
NationalityEthiopian, Canadian
Alma mater Oxford University; University of Toronto
OccupationJournalist
EmployerThe Guardian
Notable workThe Wife's Tale (2018)
Father Edemariam Tsega
Awards Jerwood Award;
Ondaatje Prize

Aida Edemariam is an Ethiopian-Canadian journalist based in the UK, who has worked in New York, Toronto and London. [1] She was formerly deputy review and books editor of the Canadian National Post , [2] and is now a senior feature writer and editor at The Guardian in the UK. She lives in Oxford. [1] Her memoir about her Ethiopian grandmother, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History, won the Ondaatje Prize in 2019. [3] [4]

Contents

Biography

Edemariam was born to an Ethiopian father and a Canadian mother. She grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. She studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto. [5]

In 2014 her then forthcoming memoir, The Wife's Tale: A Personal History [6] – the story of Edemariam's Ethiopian grandmother, Yetemegnu [7] – was awarded the Royal Society of Literature's Jerwood Award for a non-fiction work in progress. [8] [1]

Informed by the author's 70 hours of interviews and conversations in Amharic with Yetemegnu, [9] The Wife's Tale received favourable critical on its publication in February 2018 by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, [10] [11] with the reviewer for The Times finding it "enriching", [12] and Lucy Hughes-Hallett writing in the New Statesman : "To read The Wife's Tale is not just to hear about times past and (for a western reader) far away, but to be transported into them." [13] Nadifa Mohamed's review in The Guardian praised the book as "a loving portrait of a grandmother, undiminished by the distances between the author and her subject", [14] and Nilanjana Roy in The Financial Times described it as an "outstanding and unusual memoir" in which Edemariam traces a century of Ethiopian history through the life of her nonagenarian grandmother. [15] In The Observer , Arifa Akbar noted: "What brings this narrative flaring to life, though, is not the rigour of its research but its imagination and novelistic tone; Edemariam's prose climbs inside Yetemegnu's memories to inhabit them and bring her solidly, vividly, to life." [16] Selecting The Wife's Tale as one of "the best books by African writers in 2019", Samira Sawlani on African Arguments concluded: "Aida Edemariam has gifted the world a priceless insight into history through her grandmother's eyes." [17]

Edemariam was awarded the Ondaatje Prize for The Wife's Tale in May 2019. [18] [19]

She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [20]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 "Aida Edemariam page". Rogers, Coleridge & White. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  2. ↑ Edemariam, Aida (27 September 2002). "Us? Boring? Ha!". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  3. ↑ Kerr, Michael (13 May 2019). "Aida Edemariam's lyrical biography of Ethiopia wins Ondaatje Prize". The Telegraph .
  4. ↑ "Aida Edemariam wins Ondaatje Prize for vivid biography of her Ethiopian grandmother". London, UK: Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. 15 May 2019.
  5. ↑ "Aida Edemariam Books & Biography". Harper Collins. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 27 December 2017.
  6. ↑ "The Wife's Tale : A Personal History", Book Depository.
  7. ↑ "The Wife's Tale" at NetGallery.
  8. ↑ "RSL Jerwood Awards for Non-Fiction 2014", Royal Society of Literature, December 2014.
  9. ↑ Carter, Sue (22 February 2018), "Author Aida Edemariam tells stories of Ethiopia through grandmother's eyes", Metro (Toronto). Archived 15 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine .
  10. ↑ Ammara Isa, "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam" Archived 15 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine , IndieThinking at HarperCollins UK.
  11. ↑ The Wife's Tale, Fourth Estate, 2018, ISBN   978-0007459605.
  12. ↑ Ysenda Maxtone Graham, "Review: The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam — famine, Red Terror and grief in Ethiopia", The Times, 17 February 2018.
  13. ↑ Hughes-Hallett, Lucy (11 February 2018). "The Wife's Tale: Aida Edemariam's vivid portrait of her 95-year-old Ethiopian grandmother". New Statesman.
  14. ↑ Mohamed, Nadifa (23 February 2018). "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam review – portrait of a mother goddess". The Guardian.
  15. ↑ "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam — hard times: A vivid family portrait brings a century of Ethiopian history to life", Financial Times, 16 February 2018.
  16. ↑ Akbar, Arifa (18 February 2018). "The Wife's Tale by Aida Edemariam review – anatomy of an unyielding spirit". The Observer.
  17. ↑ Sawlani, Samira (16 July 2019), "The best books by African writers in 2019 so far…", African Arguments
  18. ↑ Flood, Alison (13 May 2019). "Ondaatje prize: Aida Edemariam wins for vivid biography of her grandmother". The Guardian.
  19. ↑ Wood, Heloise (14 May 2019). "Edemariam wins £10k Ondaatje Prize for 'outstanding' family memoir". The Bookseller .
  20. ↑ "New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby", Reading to Transgress, 9 March 2020.
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