Donica Merhazion was born in 1979 inside Alem Bekagn prison in Addis Ababa, a name that means “end of the world” in Amharic. Last weekend in Lagos, the debut novel she built from her parents’ story of love and resistance was commended as one of the top three books in the CANEX Prize for Publishing.
The prize itself went to Parrésia Publishers, founded by Azafi Omoluabi and Richard Ali, for South Side, a novel by Professor Akin Adesokan. The $20,000 award, now in its third edition, was announced during Creative Africa Nexus Weekend (CANEX WKND 2026) at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts, Iganmu, Lagos.
For Merhazion, a former journalist with a BA in Journalism from the University of Asmara who now teaches in Nairobi, the recognition is a first for a book that began as a family’s oral history. Born at the End of the World first made the CANEX longlist, then was singled out among the top three after the shortlist.
Her publisher, Virginia Ngoroje, Head of Operations at Mvua Press, the Nairobi-based imprint of eKitabu, travelled with her to Lagos. Ngoroje said the exposure was “exceptional” regardless of the outcome. For Merhazion, she said, seeing her parents’ survival resonate with a diverse African audience provided “immense validation” and proved that a deeply personal history has “profound universal reach”.
Bringing the book to Lagos, Ngoroje added, was “an emotional and celebratory moment”. It gave the author and the team the chance to engage directly with readers, critics and fellow authors, while the festival opened doors to distributors and publishers from across the continent.
Merhazion has been clear about why she wrote it. “This is my parents’ true story of love and resistance during Ethiopia’s Red Terror,” she has said. “I wrote it so that a history which was never written down is not lost.”
The novel follows Elen, who runs from an arranged marriage at 13, and Girmai, who ends up on the streets of Asmara after his father dies. Both build businesses, then join the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front’s underground network against the Derg, and they fall in love. Merhazion herself is the baby in the book, Hiyab, a name her mother chose that means “gift”. She lived in prison until she was a year and a half old.
Roughly 95 per cent of the book happened as her parents told it. She changed names, rebuilt some conversations and compressed timelines. Because Ethiopian and Eritrean culture is largely oral, and the Red Terror set out to destroy evidence, very little literature covers the period. She checked her parents’ accounts against news archives and academic sources, and they held up.
Love, she says, is how they survived. Her parents’ love was bigger than the trauma they endured, and they are still together. “Misery and light can share the same space” is the book’s quiet argument.
Language runs through the novel. Its dedication is in Tigrinya, written for her parents, who pushed their children towards English so they could succeed in Nairobi. Merhazion only learned to read and write Tigrinya as a teenager.
Ngoroje said the themes are firmly part of contemporary literary discourse: political memory, intergenerational trauma, resistance, state oppression and the cost of freedom movements. Seen through family, activism and motherhood under captivity, she said, the book offers “a crucial historical mirror” for present-day conversations on identity and human rights.
Merhazion sees the CANEX recognition as a result for the industry as much as for herself. Mvua Press submitted the book and co-published it with Catalyst Press in the United States. “This is a win for African publishing,” she said. “African stories can be published from Africa to the world.” Earlier, she was named Outstanding African Writer at the Radiate Rwanda awards, which she called recognition by “an African award, on African soil” that matters “more than I can say”.
eKitabu, the publisher’s parent company, is an inclusive Kenyan publishing and e-commerce company that produces books and multimedia content in print, digital, audio, video, sign language and braille. Its other imprint, Maua Books, publishes children’s literature, and its Digital Story Time project has produced more than 380 sign language videos and storybooks in six African sign languages.
Ngoroje said the team would return to Lagos “without a doubt,” citing the city’s “unmatched cultural energy” and the depth of its conversation about African storytelling.
Merhazion’s own message to Lagos and beyond is simple: “Go home and ask your elders for their stories. Knowing where you come from gives clarity to where you can go.”