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But even he can only unravel, he cannot explain. Before the war, reports the author, Haile Selassie had set about turning his country into a modern nation, hoping to learn, as Japan had quickly done, from Europe and America. Restored to his throne, however, he did less to open his country to the future than to close it within the past, preserving outworn traditions, and his own tenure, long after their usefulness had passed.
With detailed genealogies, biographies, photographs and maps, the historian traverses ground that has since been overrun by tyrannies and famine. The arena is variously host to epic, comedy and finally tragedy, and it houses enough intrigue to fill a shelf. Here is the gigantic face of Mussolini, carved out of East African rock, a modern sphinx without a secret. Here is Haile Selassie, dwarfed behind a desk only slightly smaller than an aircraft carrier. Here is Sir Sidney Barton, the eccentric British envoy who provided the model for Sir Samson Courteney in Evelyn Waugh's farce Black Mischief. Here are camels and trucks, scimitars and machine guns, lions and airplanes in a clash of politics and, more significantly, of centuries. It is a tribute to Mockler that he has managed to make this convoluted tale lucid and compelling. Still, he needed some five decades to go by before the sorrows of Ethiopia could be seen in light of the calamities of Abyssinia. --By Mayo Mohs