Teret Teret

A bold and singularly funny novel about a young Ethiopian American woman whose 21st century life collides spectacularly with Ethiopian legends that she knows can’t possibly be real, and yet… “Remember when we were children? The storyteller would shout Teret Teret, meaning a tale, a tale, and we would yell back Yelam beret! We didn’t know this meant a cow’s house, just that it rhymed. And then the story would begin.” Belaynesh Tessema, an Ethiopian American journalist working at the independent travel magazine aptly named Trivial Pursuits, isn’t exactly pleased when her overbearing boss insists she travel to D.C. to cover a story about a newly incorporated, all-Ethiopian town. When she starts packing to leave, things start to get…strange. First, there are the huge lapses in Belaynesh’s memory and sense of place and time. Perhaps more alarming, she realizes that every morning when she wakes up, she begins the same day again: September 10, 2007, which also happens to be the last day of the Ethiopian calendar year.