Adam Reta’s Couch Grass Translated by Bethlehem Attfield

A boy waits by a wall, whistling for the girl who has captured his heart. A writer believes his beard holds the secret to his art. A nursery rhyme echoes through a woman’s name, reshaping her fate. A spoonful of chili paste becomes both delight and ruin, tracing the fault lines of desire, history, and revolution.

In these four extraordinary stories, acclaimed Ethiopian author Adam Reta weaves memory, humor, and imagination into a narrative form he calls hitsinawinet, layered, looping, and alive with hidden meanings. Footnotes open unexpected doors, nursery rhymes become plotlines, and silences speak as loudly as words.

Rendered into English for the first time by Bethlehem Attfield, Couch Grass invites readers into Ethiopia’s literary heartbeat, where everyday gestures carry philosophical weight and history lingers in intimate lives. Bold, experimental, and deeply humane, this collection introduces Reta, long celebrated in Amharic, as a major new voice in world literature.