Book a Trip Abroad, no passport required! Travel the world through books. Join us on the fourth Tuesday of every month as we read books from different countries across the globe. October's selection is The History of a Difficult Child by Mihret Sibhat. Read below for a brief summary:

A breathtaking, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia’s socialist revolution

Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen to the radio in secret as the socialist military junta that recently overthrew the government seizes properties and wages civil war in the North. The Asmelashes, once an enterprising, land-owning family, are ostracized under the new regime. In the Small Town where they live, nosy women convene around coffee ceremonies multiple times a day, the gossip spreading like wildfire.

Told through the perspective of its charming and irresistible narrator, The History of a Difficult Child is about what happens when mother, God, and country are at odds, and how one difficult child finds her voice.

 Copies of the book will be available for pickup at the Beech Street Center (266 Beech Street Belmont). Questions? Email Logan at lmanchester@minlib.net.