Ciao Asmara is the story of Justin Hill's two years in the tiny African state of Eritrea, the people he met, and the astonishing country he discovered. He describes a nation rich in history: the ancient reign of the Queen of Sheba; the rule of both the Turks and Italians; the golden age of the 1950s, when the capital Asmara was the most industrialised part of Africa; and the megalomania of Ethiopian king Haile Selassie's brutal occupation. He depicts a modern Eritrea that is a country of extremes: from the burnt ochre landscape littered with war to Asmara's art deco delights; a population that has spent thirty years fighting Ethiopia in a struggle that the West has largely forgotten; a place whose welcome is always warm but whose Melotti beer is the most disgusting in the world. Read Less