Aida Edemariam

Aida Edemariam
NationalityEthiopian, Canadian
Alma materOxford University; University of Toronto
OccupationJournalist
EmployerThe Guardian
Notable workThe Wife's Tale (2018)
FatherEdemariam Tsega
AwardsJerwood 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]

Biography

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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]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "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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