And Still Plays the Abyssinian Damsel on her Dulcimer

And Still Plays the Abyssinian Damsel on Her Dulcimer is a novel based on Ethiopian history and legends. The story has thirteen chapters representing the thirteen months in the Ethiopian calendar.

The narrator, a professor at an Ethiopian University, flies from Mumbai to Addis Ababa, and then to his destination. He is haunted by the Abyssinian damsel whom the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw in a dream and described in his poem “Kubla Khan.”

The Abyssinian damsel tells the story of Ethiopia from prehistoric to modern times, revealing herself as one who visited King Solomon together with the Queen of Sheba. The Rift Valley of Ethiopia, where three-million-year-old human fossils have been discovered, is considered the birthplace of Homo sapiens. A myriad of legends like the Serpent Kings and Queen Gudit intertwine with Ethiopia’s history.

Reviewing the novel, Barbara Biehler wrote, “A fine writing style and tells a great story.”

Where They Shattered His Green Dreams

Where They Shattered His Green Dreams is a novel based on media reports following NATO’s war against Libya. The account begins when Colonel Gaddafi’s tragic assassination is announced, and ends with the narrator of the story, a professor of journalism at Al Fateh University in Tripoli, being murdered.

The first chapter describes an evening in Tripoli on February 11, 2011, the Eve of Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, and the last chapter details the cold-blooded assassination of Colonel Gaddafi, Libya’s ruler for forty-two years, on October 20, 2011.

Major characters include Fatima, a beautiful Libyan girl in traditional black dress who always speaks against the dictator’s rule, and an old Sufi saint, who predicts the destruction of Libya by NATO forces before he is killed by mercenaries at the end of the book.

Unknown facts are revealed for the first time through the pages of this political novel.

About the Author

Alexander Raju, an Indian English novelist and short story writer, has many books to his credit. Ripples and Pebbles (1989), Sprouts of Indignation (2003) and Magic Chasm (2007) are poetry collections. His first novel The Haunted Man came out in 1997 and his second novel, Upon This Bank and Shoal, in 2008.

The Psycho-Social Interface in British Fiction (2000) is a critical work and The Voice of Ethiopia (2008) is an edited work. Poles Apart on the Same Bed (2011) is a collection of twenty-nine short stories. His latest novel is When Babel Tower Is Falling Down (2014). A bilingual writer in Malayalam and English, he has been writing for forty years. He has been a journalist, a lawyer, and is currently an English professor at the University of Gondar in Ethiopia.