Overview

Historical novels on the Cold War, that followed the Second World War, are numerous and diversified. A few years back Encarta estimated the availability of 36 historical novels dealing on the general topic, 12 on the Korean War and 39 dealing with the Vietnam War. ''For Love, Loyalty, Freedom and Dignity'' ventures in the uncharted area about the impact of the Cold War in East Africa, Ethiopia.What makes unique Ethiopia in the Cold War was its membership to the League of Nations which attacked by fascist Italy led to the Second World War. Ethiopia was also unique for joining the United Nations against the Axis powers in 1942 as one of the founding members of the UN. Ethiopia was the first and last battle ground of the Cold War. During the heydays of the Cold War most of the characters in the book found themselves in prison, their friends dead on the streets. Others were scattered in foreign lands and some found themselves in desolate places turned warriors.Political parties and government took into their hands the right to pass death sentences on what they considered enemies to their ideologies. Hundreds of thousands perished through terrors.The book is set in Ethiopia which was the first victim and the first nation to be freed from the yoke of fascist atrocities. The characters in the book found themselves not only in the crossfire between the two superpowers but also faced the onslaught of the clandestine neo-fascists who became keen to conduct the Second Ethio-Italian War by other means. The neo-fascists using PLO, Libya, Syria and Egypt governments and the former Italian colonies made the Cold War the fiercest of all proxy wars.The book based on the personal experience of the characters draws the regional and international environments and the impact on individuals.When Mengistu In 1987, adopted a new constitution and officially joined the ranks of Communist states, the president of USA was Reagan who was a determined warrior who was working to give the Soviet Union the final blow. At the same time the leader of the Soviet Union was Gorbachev who had two years earlier in 1985 declared his policy of Glasnost which led in mere four to five years to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some of the characters in the novel considered Mengistu as Don Quixote in the classical novel of Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote was a Spanish nobleman but Mengistu was a communist warrior and both believed that they were combating the world's injustices. Don Quixote took to arms after the collapse of the system he wanted to mimic. Mengistu's was not different.The Second World War ended with a bipolar world with USA and USSR on its helms. The Second World War continued the war as an ideological struggle between the two ideological fronts with the rest of the countries allied beside the two powers USA and USSR. The Cold War also produced its antithesis. Group of people rose and forwarded a dream about a world Federation with the convergence of the two Western traditions of socialism and liberalism. The characters tried to achieve world government in the likeness of one or the other super power.The book is concluded in a positive mood where individual actions contribute a drop in the ocean of human history which is going to its ultimate destiny of world governance through rules, regulations, standards.The characters Abebe from Ethiopia and Tsehay from Eritrea rediscover the commonality between them in their history and culture as they found their antagonisms and differences in ideologies of the Cold War.The book also brings us to the reality of the situation on the ground as the late Professor Tekie Fesshatzion and the late Prime Minister Meles forward ideas that moved their societies to what they became in the modern world.The book addresses the impacts of the Cold War on the past and present reality of people in the proxy war fields of the Cold War.

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9781482589726

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