Nega Mezlekia was born in Ethiopia. A professional engineer with degrees from Addis Ababa University, the Wageningen University in the Netherlands, the University of Waterloo, and McGill University, he now lives in Toronto. His memoir, Notes from the Hyena's Belly, received international praise and won the Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. His writing has received international acclaim and has been compared by critics to that of Gabriel García Márquez, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, and Isabel Allende.
