Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (2009) is the most widely read novel set in Addis Ababa — a sprawling family saga centred on twin brothers born in an Ethiopian mission hospital. Verghese, himself from an Indian-Ethiopian family, captures the city of the 1950s–70s with authority: the Piazza cafes, the medical world, the Indian and Armenian communities, and the turmoil of the Derg years. It is the obvious starting point for anyone wanting to approach the city through fiction.
Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski (1978) is a classic of New Journalism, assembled from interviews with servants of Haile Selassie's court. Kapuscinski reconstructs the final years of the imperial palace through the eyes of people who served there — footmen who wiped up after the Emperor's dog, court chamberlains, officials. It is oblique, poetic, and never entirely separable from the author's own political context, but as a portrait of power and its collapse, it is extraordinary.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste (2019) follows an Ethiopian woman who disguises herself as a soldier to fight the Italian invasion of 1935. A Booker Prize finalist, it is partly set in Addis and the Ethiopian highlands during the occupation, and gives a visceral account of a period of Ethiopian history that the West knows almost nothing about.