Aida Edemariam

Guardian Journalist Ada Edemariam talks about her prize-winning personal memoir of her grandmother, through which she tells the story of modern Ethiopia.

Edemariam reveals a resilient woman of deep Christian faith whose life was transformed by volatile events. Her grandmother, Yetemegnu, was born in Gondar in 1916 and was married and a mother before she turned 15. In the course of her life, Ethiopia went from feudalism to monarchy to Marxist revolution and democracy. Edemariam describes how Yetemegnu endured the death of some of her children, her husband’s imprisonment, and the detention of one of her sons. She witnessed the Fascist invasion and the resistance, suffered allied bombardment and then lived through a bloody revolution and the nationalisation of her land.

Edemariam is of dual Canadian and Ethiopian heritage. She has worked as a journalist in Toronto, New York and London. The Wife’s Tale won the £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje prize.

Here she talks to BBC news presenter and journalist Gwenan Edwards, whose credits include the BBC Proms, Wales at Six on ITV, and Newsroom South East and Watchdog on BBC1.