{"id":275944,"date":"2019-05-13T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CAIiEByPS0bXsceQmXlM11Y9k5oqFwgEKg4IACoGCAowm6R6MMKqCTCy8LkF?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-09-18T11:53:01","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T15:53:01","slug":"aida-edemariam-won-the-ondaatje-prize-for-the-wifes-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/275944","title":{"rendered":"Aida Edemariam won the Ondaatje Prize for The Wife\u2019s Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In May 2019 the Royal Society of Literature\u2019s Ondaatje Prize, worth \u00a310,000 for a work that evokes the spirit of a place, went to Aida Edemariam for The Wife\u2019s Tale, her lyrical biography rooted in Ethiopian family and history.<\/p>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" height=\"780\" width=\"780\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-601742\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/culture-national-theatre-1280.jpg?fit=780%2C780&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Aida Edemariam won the Ondaatje Prize for The Wife\u2019s Tale\" \/>\n<p>Edemariam\u2019s book followed her grandmother\u2019s life across Ethiopia\u2019s twentieth-century upheavals, giving English-language readers a intimate path into places usually reached only through famine footage or palace politics.<\/p>\n<p>Literary prizes do not settle wars, but they do decide which Ethiopian stories get shelf space abroad.<\/p>\n<p>As culture archive, the Ondaatje win marks a diaspora writer bringing Ethiopian memory into a major British literary room without reducing the country to a single crisis headline.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/travel\/books\/winner-of-the-ondaatje-prize-for-2019-revealed\/\">The Telegraph<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aida Edemariam&#8217;s lyrical biography of Ethiopia wins Ondaatje Prize&nbsp;&nbsp;The TelegraphThe Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature, \u00a310,000 for a work \u201cevoking the spirit of a place\u201d, was awarded tonight to Aida Edemariam for The Wife&#8217;s &#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":601742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/culture-national-theatre-1280.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-19MI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275944"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754514,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275944\/revisions\/754514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}