3 October 2026

The English translation of Girma Tesfaw's Amharic novel ሰልፍ ሜዳ  by Hewan Semon has now been published as Psalms of Aftermath by Fidessa Literary. The book launch is on the 3rd of October in The Hague and the book will be available for purchase starting then online as well as elsewhere. 

A quote taken from the Translator’s Preface: “The futility of life is a general, recurring theme in Psalms of Aftermath. Perhaps Girma has understood something we have not. Or perhaps he is the moulding of a country that glamorises sorrow and nostalgia. Is a woman really beautiful if she is not slightly sad? Is a man truly complete if a tinge of grief doesn’t sparkle in his eyes? Is music to be admired if it doesn’t tug at one’s heart? Likewise, each page of this book is a reminder of the sorrow and loneliness deep inside the hearts of each one of us. His characters are Ethiopians living through the end of a bloody regime’s reign following a revolution. The day-to-day lives of urban Ethiopians are shown, meaning that readers will take a personal step into one community’s realities, a fictional neighbourhood called Sälf Meda, and witness—among many things—bread shortages, families torn apart because of politics, humanity’s means of coping with hopelessness, people’s cruelties and kindnesses, longings and lonelinesses. The power of religious identities and myth in Ethiopia is also presented beautifully."