Murray Last, the eminent editor of Journal of Modern African Studies, says about Two Weeks in the Trenches, “ I found it so moving that I couldn’t put it down....”
He further notes that he found “The Heart,” one of the short stories in the book, “...more captivating than I did the first time around. Of course, the rhythms of the sentences, the restrained poetry of some of the phrasing and words, were as much a delight as before. It reads extraordinarily well in English (it makes me wonder how the original Tigrinya sounds), with its clarity, its near-simplicity of expression. I could imagine it being read aloud....”