While I was careful to preface Ethiopia through writers’ eyes with the following caveat:

“Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.”

The Theologians, Jorge Luis Borges

It rests that as soon as a book is launched into the world, be it from the flat topped amba of Mount Abora, a multitude of overlooked works immediately begin to form a perilously high tower of their own.

Here then, after the canon of Ethiopia through writers’ eyes,  the Apocrypha:

Flashman on the March

“I know when to let it be, so I accepted her handshake and asked if she had any further instructions for me. She thought for a moment, and the laughter went out of her eyes. “One thing more. I know you have been at war since before I was born, and are a seasoned soldier accustomed to command. But you do not know Habesh. And on our journey mine word must be law. If there is danger of a sudden, and I command, you will obey at once, without question. Is it so?”

I knew from her look that she was half expecting an argument, so I didn’t give her one, but nodded grave-faced and touched my brow in acknowledgement. “In your own words, Uliba-Wark… I think we shall travel well together.” She liked that, as I meant she should.”

(The last and tenth novel in the Flashman series, Flashman on the March takes place during the Napier expedition to free the royal hostages of Emperor Theodoros. Flashman is enlisted to convoy a shipload of Maria Theresa Thalers from Trieste to Abyssinia, via Suez. The ‘dastardly scoundrel’ then travels to Magdala and assists in the emperor’s demise – a fate which Flashman bemoans, telling Napier that the whole sorry story could have been avoided if only the British had deigned to answer Theodoros’ letters. Historically accurate, politically incorrect and replete with Victorian lingo, Flashman on the March is a good introduction to these times – the kind of book that Graham Greene would have called ‘an entertainment’ – which was meant as a compliment)