The History of a Difficult Child
Poets & Writers Magazine|July - August 2023
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
Mihret Sibhat
The History of a Difficult Child

The resulting flood carries detritus to the Small River, which passes things along to the Medium River, which hands the lot off to the Big River, and before we know it we, too, are swept away, caught in the force of that water, in the force of those sentences, which take us right to Selam Asmelash, the irresistible and unforgettable heart of the story-a not-quite-a-child narrator busy making her way into the world.

"I am the little terrorist who managed to fuck with an entire town's head before I was even born, and this is my story," Selam says. This line has stayed in my head. As Selam narrates the story of her onceprosperous family navigating socialist political upheaval in the 1980s, she can't help but be blunt, outlining with savage wit and undeniable tenderness the thousand hypocrisies of the political and personal jockeying around her. The smallest child in her sizable family, Selam  somehow manages-relentlessly, like that flood-to pose big questions about politics, power, and faith. Mihret Sibhat has written a novel that seamlessly and audaciously teaches us to play by its rules and to read along at its merciless, fluid velocity. It's a book that will make you feel like you must keep up with it and that there's nothing you'd rather do.

One of the most astonishing things about your book is the voice. The narrator is a child, and even though Selam has little control over her world, she has command of the story. How did you think about approaching her perspective, and what were the most exciting and challenging parts of navigating this point of view?

This story is from the July - August 2023 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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This story is from the July - August 2023 edition of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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