The guard who witnessed my father’s brutal assassination testified how Mengistu Haile Mariam, the head of the Military Regime, and his officials came to the torture chambers to watch their victims being slaughtered. This is why it took me twenty years to bring myself to read this book. Each time I picked it up and tried to read a section of it, I cried uncontrollably and had to put it down. Initially the book had been written in Norwegian but it was later translated to German, Swahili, Mandarin and other Scandinavian languages.

I heard that Aud had arranged for an English translation, but before it was finalized she passed away. This is how the English-speaking world has failed to hear the story of a courageous woman who unconditionally loved the Lord despite imprisonment, torture and the fragmentation of her family. The brutal acts, inhumanity, and injustice described in the book may trigger anger, remorse, and outrage in the reader. At the same time, reading of how both my parents responded to the brutality inflicted upon them will demonstrate vividly the power of love, the cost of discipleship, determination, faithfulness, and victory in the way of Christ. My mother was asked in an interview what she would like to see happen to her tormentors. Her response was: ‘’that they may come to know Christ and through forgiveness inherit the kingdom of God’’. This kind of response is beyond human understanding. Only through the grace of God can it be achieved. My mother’s childhood, coinciding with the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, portrays fascism at its worst. Italian soldiers set fire to fields ready for harvest, annihilated innocent villagers, burned whole villages, and scattered families mercilessly, reducing them to poverty and homelessness.

My mother managed to escape the wrath of the Italians, who killed her merchant father and made her mother a refugee, only to be kidnapped and abused by slave traders. A traumatic childhood! She was ill-treated, beaten, sick and starved at the hands of vicious men. A similar kind of brutality recurred many decades later when she found herself in the hands of ferocious Derg military men who took pleasure in shredding her flesh to pieces and breaking her bones as they tortured her. As I was totally immersed in the thoughts of the indescribable atrocities committed against both of my parents, I was led to reflect on the words spoken to the church of Pergamum in Revelation: ‘’I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is’’. This, I thought to myself, could also have been a suitable title for this book: ‘’Where Satan’s Throne is’’. Such an act of cruelty, savagery, mercilessness, and injustice against the innocent can only be expected in Satan’s kingdom.

Throughout the different eras and regimes, Ethiopia suffered in this way. Underneath the superficial image that Ethiopia likes to show the rest of the world—as hospitable, never-colonized, a Christian island in a sea of paganism—lies inhumanity, injustice, and brutality indescribable in human words. The true stories told in this book expose the ancient Ethiopian camouflage, loaded with fairy tales and myths, while unveiling the true face of Ethiopia.