BURNT EUCALYPTUS WOOD, on origins, language and identity

169pp., paperback, First English Language Edition, Indigo Press, London, 2023

ISBN: 9781911648581

First published in Catalan in 2022 as Fusta d'eucaliptus cremada.

A memoir about identity, displacement, and belonging by Ennatu Domingo, who was adopted from Ethiopia at age seven and taken to Barcelona. She never forgot her nomadic childhood in Gondar, near the northern border with Eritrea, and shares her journey of navigating two worlds, torn between memory and the present.

"Burnt Eucalyptus Wood defies easy categorisation. It is at once a love story and a battle cry, an elegy and an anthem. It is compulsive reading, bursting with tenderness and realisations. Take note: this astonishing book announces the arrival of a rare voice, wise beyond her years. Perhaps beyond all of ours." Maasta Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"In the midst of so much pessimism, especially among young people, this book is like a crack of light in the dark ... Compulsory reading." Time Out (Barcelona)

Ennatu Domingo was born in Ethiopia in 1996. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Kent, England, and an MA in International Conflict and Security from the University of Kent, Belgium. She currently works as a research assistant for the European Center for Development Policy Management in Maastricht. She has lived in Kenya, Belgium, and the UK, and has travelled across five continents, but keeps returning to the country of her childhood to reconstruct a lost identity, guided by the echo of her first language, Amharic, and a rich cultural heritage.