Aida Edemariam at London Literature Festival

Peopled by a cast of richly drawn characters, from proud priests to emperors and empresses, Marxist revolutionaries to wartime double agents, this is a many-layered portrait of Ethiopia that challenges misconceptions about the country, as witnessed by an indomitable woman.

Esi Edugyan's novel Half Blood Blues won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. Washington Black is her third novel. Drawing on a history with profound implications for the present, the novel is teeming with life, powered by an irrepressible character who refuses to settle for an existence of enslavement.

Aida Edemariam is of dual Ethiopian and Canadian heritage. She grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and studied English literature at Oxford University and the University of Toronto. She has worked as a journalist in New York, Toronto and London, where she is currently a senior feature writer and editor for The Guardian. She is a recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for a work of non-fiction in progress.