We move back and forth between the daily routines of deeply devoted families in Harar in the 1970s as Ethiopia disintegrates, and of the exile community in London in the '80s as Lilly awaits word of her Sudanese lover, who chose to stay on to fight the Haile Selassie regime.

Gibb's prose rhythms are lovely, her language sensuous, her images vivid and her story of love doomed by political reality dramatic and moving. Still, this is an engrossing listen because the novel is well written and timely. Reading also casts many of the Ethiopian women in a harsh, high range that makes them sound rather silly. She often uses an annoying little-girl voice for protagonist Lilly, a white Western woman raised in a Moroccan shrine as a devout Muslim, living through the 1970s among Ethiopian Muslims who consider her a 'forenji' (foreigner) despite her Arabic fluency and her Islamic piety. By drawing upon several postcolonial theories including those of Aijaz Ahmad, Chinua Achebe, and Margery Lee, and the close examination of events and characters in the novel, this paper will argue that despite the dedication the protagonist shows to her cause, Islam, and the impoverished people of Ethiopia, she, and by extension, the author who had spent a period of her life in Ethiopia conducting research as an anthropologist view Ethiopians as their “Civilizational Other.While Kate Reading has a beautiful narrator's voice, low and lilting, dramatic and enticing, her characterizations are problematic. This superiority raises the question of the credibility of the author and the sincerity of her tone that bring to mind Chinua Achebe’s observation that the “insiders” almost always question the “outsider’s” expression of sympathy and concern for the insiders. Both the writer and the protagonist in the story are placed above Western readers who, on average, have limited knowledge of Islam and the widely different customs of Muslims. Yet, the tone of the white Western author, her knowledge of Islam, her extensive familiarity with the Arabic language and the various dialects spoken in Ethiopia, as well as characterization in the novel make it impossible not to read the story from a purely postcolonial angel. Issues of race, language, culture, tradition, religion, and politics are intermingled in the pages of the novel and are vividly discussed within the context of conflict and war in Ethiopia as well as in the austere England of Thatcher’s time. Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly is a novel with many layers that can be read from different perspectives.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb