At Harvard university in 1995 an outwardly unassuming Ethiopian student Sinedu Tadesse stabbed herVietnamese roommate Trang Phuong Ho 45 times before hanging herself. Melanie Thernstrom investigated the story for the New Yorker but the Harvard authorities preferred to cover up events which reflect poorly on the grand university and its inability to fully integrate third world students. She discovered that Trang, who was both social and well-liked had, just before her death asked to be roomed with a different student for her final year. Sinedu, like most Ethiopians was fantastically reserved by western standards and had become increasingly crushed by depression and personality problems. Thernstrom visited Ethiopia to try and unravel Sinedu's personality problems and talked to her family and former school students about possible motives - lesbianism (unheard of in Ethiopia); possession by devils? Or was she framed? This is a moving and powerful journalistic account about two displaced girls - for whom admission to Harvard was like 'halfway heaven', the stepping stone to the American dream, that turned instead to the blackest torment.
