Wrong: I Didn't Do it for You" & "Three Eritrean Plays | Eritrea (Tour D'Afrique) first read: Jan 2011

[Lorraine M.]

Kevin wrote: "As for "Three Eritrean Plays," I'd love to read it, but $20 for 60 pages... I know I'm coming across as some curmudgeon..."

I got the book through my local library's interlibrary loan service. The stories of how the plays came about was almost as interesting as the plays themselves. Although set in Eritrea and the revolution I found that all 3 plays have a universal appeal as well: women's rights, forgiveness and collaboration in Zerai's "A Village Dream"; friendship, honor, morality (in the sense of doing the right thing) and money's power to corrupt in Dirar's "The Snare"; love in difficult times and the conflicting nature of love and purpose in Tseggai's "Aster". I would love to see these plays performed on stage...or better yet in Eritrea with the music.

If your local library doesn't have access to the book maybe the library of your local college/university has it. As you noted it is only 60 pages and is a very quick--and very enjoyable--read.

[[deleted user]]

I read Heart of Fire--my review. I was disappointed for a variety of reasons, though I did get a sense of Eritrean daily life.

[Marieke]

Lorraine said "The stories of how the plays came about was almost as interesting as the plays themselves."

i agree! i started this tonight, finally. i've only read the introductory material so far and plan to read one play per day over the next week or so. the background information also helped me straighten out some of my confusion over the sequence of events that i was experiencing after reading Michela Wrong's book. i think if i go back to Wrong's book to reread parts of it, i won't feel confused anymore. i think this is an excellent pairing of books for the tour!

[Julia]

Marieke wrote: "Lorraine said "The stories of how the plays came about was almost as interesting as the plays themselves."

i agree! i started this tonight, finally. i've only read the introductory material so far..."

I've got the book after almost one and a half months and as the others have already pointed out, I find the introduction almost as interesting as reading the plays itself. I've finished the first one about the women leaving their village because they're sick of slaving for their men day and night, and it was an interesting and extremely quick read. I can imagine that on scene this would be much stronger. These plays are written to change society in a positive way, and the message of the first play is clearly equality between the genders - the writing style might be a little bit edgy sometimes, but considering that authors of these plays aren't artists or writers, but freedom fighters who were chosen for writing classes it's an amazing read. I'm looking forward to the other two plays.

[Marieke]

i have not had a chance to get to these yet! but i am going to...
Julia, have you gotten to read the next play yet?

[Julia]

Yes, I'm half into the third play as I'm reading this whenever I have a spare minute at work while reading other stuff at home. It's really an extremely quick read and these plays must be performable in maybe half an hour, I think, at the most. Marieke, you'll have them finished in little time, I'm sure, but they're worth it and I don't regret I bought them.

The second one is rather interesting as well and it has quite much suspense - one's guessing right till the end how it's all going to unravel. As in the first play it's obvious that these works were written as propaganda and for positive education of the people - I don't want to give too much away, though.


So far, I'm liking Aster, the last of the three plays, best as one great topic is love and female fighters an,d I can really relate to that.

[Sea]

"I Didn't Do It for You" looks extremely interesting...I just have to find a way of getting my hands on it.

[Andrea]

I really love alibris.com for used books.