"Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles" is an exploration of the Eritrean struggle for independence from Ethiopia, waged from 1961 to 1991, and the postindependence nation-building project. The book focuses on the way the Eritrean revolution drew refugees and exiles in the urban United States and nationalist guerrilla fighters in the Horn of Africa together in a common, yet contested, political agenda.

Through a combination of ethnography and creative exposition, anthropologist Tricia Redeker Hepner recounts the experiences of Eritreans in their homeland and in the United States,...