Before She Breaks My Heart is the coming-of-age-story of a young Eritrean raised in the slums of Addis Ababa who ends up as a teacher in a small village in post independence Eritrea. His struggle is not to fight for his young nation but to survive the insoluble conflicts of his soul. How can he reconcile his mother being a prostitute and her paying for his education? His innate belief in the superiority of women and his crass sexual behavior? His intense powers of introspection and his ambivalent attitude towards life? With the acute awareness of a young artist, he feels trapped by what is traditionally expected of him as a man yet tortured by the fresh everyday beauty he sees around him. If he embraces it, must he, like the world, betray it? He wants to escape - from Addis, from his motheris misplaced love, from his sexual desire, from his more romantic ideals, from his education and role as a teacher, from the stultifying mores of the village where he lives and works - but escape to what? Rahel Asghedom Zere offers a portrait in progress of a new generation of Eritreans stuck on a battlefield at least as harsh as the Sahel - in their souls."