Gebreyesus Hailu

Eloquent and thought-provoking, this classic novel by the Eritrean novelist Gebreyesus Hailu, written in Tigrinya in 1927 and published in 1950, is one of the earliest novels written in an African language and will have a major impact on the reception and critical appraisal of African literature. The Conscript depicts, with irony and controlled anger, the staggering experiences of the Eritrean ascari, soldiers conscripted to fight in Libya by the Italian colonial army against the nationalist Libyan forces fighting for their freedom from Italy’s colonial rule. Anticipating midcentury thinkers Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, Hailu paints a devastating portrait of Italian colonialism. Some of the most poignant passages of the novel include the awakening of the novel’s hero, Tuquabo, to his ironic predicament of being both under colonial rule and the instrument of suppressing the colonized Libyans. The novel’s remarkable descriptions of the battlefield awe the reader with mesmerizing images, both disturbing and tender, of the Libyan landscape—with its vast desert sands, oases, horsemen, foot soldiers, and the brutalities of war—uncannily recalled in the satellite images that were brought to the homes of millions of viewers around the globe in 2011, during the country’s uprising against its former leader, Colonel Gaddafi.

A Novel of Libya's Anticolonial War

The Conscript

Aisha Mugo

I’m done with Italy and its tribulations

I am done with conscription and Italian medals 

And with the loss of his mind’s eye, he had no use for his sight and hearing. 

With their entrails soaked in blood, they all perished together there, with bellies open of both killers and the killed. Oh, it was a horrible sight. You wouldn’t even wish this to happen to your enemy. May the parents of these sons of 

 not see this; may anyone who has a human heart not see this. This had become the end of the brave young Ethiopians. And the Italian who led them to this and made this happen was going to have a good night’s sleep in his homeland. Nothing was going to happen to him. Everything worked well for him. 

The Conscript quotes

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