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The Shadow King

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The Shadow King

By: Maaza Mengiste
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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About this listen

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020.

A Times Audiobook of the Week.

Ethiopia, 1935.

With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade.

Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers?

©2020 Maaza Mengiste (P)2020 Canongate Books Ltd Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Africa Italy War

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Critic reviews

"Beautiful and devastating." (Marlon James)

"Unforgettably conveyed by the narrator Robin Miles, whose upbringing in the ethnic melting pot of New Jersey has enhanced her gift for entering into character...the listener never feels lost, only more deeply involved. It is easily the best title on the Booker 2020 longlist." (Christina Hardyment, The Times)
All stars
Most relevant  
the author's final words. women's importance in all wars is never truly recognized nor appreciated.

So true,

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I was entertained and educated. I thought the epilogue detracted from the rest of the book.

Forgotten war

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The Shadow King is an operatic sweep of history. The backdrop to the central story is the history of Ethiopia under the rule of Haile Selassie I and the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s. At its most powerful is the story of the women who fought in the Ethiopian armies to help defeat the Italian invaders and who were later forgotten and written out of these histories because they were women. Hirut and Aster take centre stage in a war waged by men and about men. They guard the Shadow King, the unauthorised standing for the emperor in exile - a ruse to build moral and bolster resistance. It’s an homage the real shadow kings.

We follow these womens life stories which were largely dictated by men and whose destinies were tied up in the lives, identities and histories of men. Men like Kidane, Fucelli and Ettore.

The author bravely juxtaposes the plight of the Jews in Europe under Hitler/Mussolini with that of the plight of the Africans under European colonisation through the character of Ettore, an Italian solider and photographer of the horrors of the Italian invasion. He is both enemy and exile in Ethiopia - hated by the Ethiopians as a soldate in the Italian army and now hated by Mussolini as an Italian Jew. His status mirrors that of the lives and positions of natal Africans living in their own countries under European invasion - enemies and exiles within their own countries and so are the Europeans. Everyone inhabiting those roles depending on the perspectives.

Mengiste shows that what Hitler was doing to Jews in Europe, Europe was doing to worse to the rest of the world in its quest for empire.

This is a story of many layers. A masterpiece written with such lyricism and skilfulness. A book that is representative of the talented writers from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia, the former European colonies who are telling their stories from their own perspectives with greater depths and integrity than the European writers who felt they had the authority to tell stories about people they couldn’t see as multi-dimensional and fully human.

Highly recommended.

An operatic sweep of history

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There’s too much I’d like to say about this book to fit into an Audible review. This author is extraordinary. A literary work of art, The Shadow King collages Ethiopian and Italian cultures, summoning the choral language of Greek war epics but redressing them with female soldier protagonists, for the history of the many Ethiopian women who fought in battles has never been formally recorded nor written about.
Not a fast-paced story, the sense of the endurance of war, of anticipation of conflict, of captivity, of a slowly increasing threat to freedom — build effectively as the plots progress.
It is a challenging read for a narrator, to keep engaging the listener and embody the many voices of characters from different cultures. I did find at times I couldn’t tell who was speaking, as the accents and voices weren’t always discernible — Italian, Ethiopian, male, female — and sometimes the intonation was unnatural/distracting, but probably because of my own dialect. 😆
Ultimately a memorable ‘read’.

Fascinating

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Loved it.
Powwerful.
Emotive.
Heroic.
Inspirational.
Unity.
Syrength.
Survival.
Ancestry.
Growth and love.

Are highly recommended read or listen.

Ras ter Feri 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

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I was gripped from the beginning to the end. Somehow Maaza Mengiste manages to write an epic story in an intimate way. To me this book is of the quality of the Odyssey and War and Peace, yet it was so fresh and alive. Maaza Mengiste touched my soul with this story.
Robin Miles was a truly outstanding narrator.
Both writer and narrator are incredibly gifted.

Outstanding book

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No doubt most people are aware of the Holocaust of Jews under the Nazis but probably few people outside Ethiopia are aware of the genocide of Ethiopian people by the Italian military, following their invasion of the country in 1935. Even fewer people are probably aware of the involvement of women in the fighting against the Italians during those years. This book brilliantly brings this story to the light; it is beautifully read by Robin Miles and Maaza Mengiste's prose is majesterial, evoking the fear, excitement, anger and eventual triumph of the brave people who fought those invaders. It is also the story of a young woman, abused not just by the Italians but by the misogynies of her patriarchal cultures, And the book does not take a Manichean perspective, by portraying all Ethiopians as brave and honourable and all Italians as cowardly and fascistic. A wonderful book that should have won the booker prize and should be read by everyone who thinks colonialism was an great project.

A story that needs to be heard by more people

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I had to read it twice.It taught me so much and with so much feeling. One of the best books I have read in nearly 60 years

So interesting and absorbing

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I chose this because it looked like the most interesting story on the Booker longlist - and I wasn't disappointed. Like Kate Grenville, the author takes inspiration from some family history to tell the incredible story of female soldiers in Ethiopia. There's some cracking lines about dealing with colonialisation, a few of my favourites were: 'Make living your first act of defiance' and 'Only soil will remember who we are. Nothing but earth is strong enough to withstand the burden of memory'. Reading is about temporarily escaping the cosy rut of your own existence and seeing the world through someone else's eyes. I knew nothing about Ethiopia in the 1930s but I do now. This is also a very topical book in terms of unheard stories and perspectives.

A gun that has tasted blood wants more...

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Could not get connected with the characters, found it hard to care what happened to them.

Difficult to follow

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