Read at face value, this book can be taken as a life story. However, the underlying aim is to explore, through the guise of a life story, what kind of country Ethiopia was when the author was born, the life of its people, the interconnectedness of its society, its cultures, its administration, and particularly what the plan to modernize the country, designed by Emperor Haile Selassie, looked like, what results it brought after time passed, the beginning and course of the Ethiopian Revolution, then in what condition our country is today, what can be said about its future prospects, and whether the situation that awaits us is something we can control or an invincible force of history that moves on its own. The main focus, therefore, is not on my life but on Ethiopia.

— Except from the book