Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal (1992). A journalist's investigation into the claim that the Ark of the Covenant was taken from Jerusalem to Ethiopia and eventually to Axum. The argument is contested by scholars, but the research takes Hancock through Lalibela, the monastery of Debre Damo, and the treasure room at Axum. Whether or not you accept the theory, the book makes the Ethiopian Orthodox world feel urgent and strange in exactly the way you will feel when you first descend into the trench at Biete Giorgis.
Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor (1978). A Polish journalist's account of the last years of Haile Selassie's reign, told through interviews with courtiers who remained anonymous for safety. It is not specifically about Lalibela, but it gives an indelible portrait of the old Ethiopian world — hierarchical, devout, proud, and crumbling — that shaped the towns and churches of the north. Kapuściński was one of the greatest prose stylists in twentieth-century journalism.
Dervla Murphy, In Ethiopia with a Mule (1968). Murphy rode a mule from Massawa on the Red Sea coast across the Ethiopian highlands, passing through much of the territory that includes Lalibela. Her account is honest about the hardship and delighted by the landscape and the people. Read it for her description of the highland villages, the Orthodox priests, and the way the world looks from mule height in the mountains.
Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King (2019). A novel about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–36, following Ethiopian women who fight alongside men in the resistance. Set partly in the northern highlands, it gives a vivid account of the landscape and a historical event — the invasion and occupation — that shaped the country's relationship with the outside world. Mengiste grew up partly in Ethiopia and the writing has the authority of someone who knows the land.