I have a German friend who is my age. She lived in Addis Abeba in the early years of the Ethiopian revolution with her family, the 1970s. Thanks to her family’s enthusiasm for literature and art, she had a chance to meet with some of the day’s prominent painters and writers. Among them was Dagnachew Worku. She has a copy of one of his books as a souvenir, as a gift from the writer himself. It was the fruit of being acquainted with him in those feverish days.

She knew him long after copies of his epic book “Adefris” were collected from book stores by himself and piled up in one of the rooms of his house. It was so because there was no way he could resist the concerted campaign of the potboilers of the day on the daily papers to criticise his work.

Sure, there were some concerns about the choice of his words in his writing, which makes his book difficult to read without an Amharic dictionary – hardly available then and if even available also hard to refer just for the meaning of a word – close by at hand.

Yet, the man who pioneered creative writing, with a promise of so much more to offer, refused to duel with his many rivals' ill-natured comments. Consequently, he distanced himself from the literary scene. It was unfortunate for Ethiopia’s thriving literary world of the time and the potential it had.

I was reminiscing about this as I was packing some of his books from my collections to donate to Zagol book bank. This was after watching the commendable bank’s effort to nurture the culture of reading in the country, which I learned about from a promotion available on a YouTube channel. It distributes the collections to book clubs established all over the country. It is inspiring that such initiatives exist, giving the literary scene a fighting chance.

A similar effort is Walya Bookstore’s invitation of household name writers to face their audience, breathing further life to their stories as they shed light on what they may have behind the stories. It is equally fascinating to watch that many youngsters gather to have a closer look at their writing heroes, bringing amazing details as conversation openers as questions. They sometimes make ironic comments on books and at times come up with sweeping remarks about writing in the country in general.