THE SHADOW KING by MAAZA MENGISTE

Booker Prize Longlist #2

This historical novel deserves its place on every literary longlist in the country. There were times when I didn’t feel worthy enough to read this book - I felt it should have been read by someone far more intelligent than I. However, it wasn’t pretentious at all. It just made me want to be that more intelligent person.
This book follows a cast of characters and the part they played in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. As the reader we see from all points of view, and while it is normally very easy to recognise the good guys from the bad guys, this writer purposely blurred those lines because - let’s be honest - there’s no such thing as goodies and baddies. In this case, Mengiste tried to get us to understand that people don’t see themselves as the bad guys - they see themselves as doing what needs to be done. We may not agree with their reasons or methods but to them it makes perfect sense. I think it’s good to understand this now, especially as “cancel culture” seems to be on the rise (something I will discuss with an open mind because I understand both sides of the argument).

What this writer also does brilliantly is uplifting the forgotten female characters. I love this angle. I think this is why I have enjoyed so many of the feminist Greek myth retelling lately. I like imagining the stories of those who history forgets or glosses over. Or seeing something from a different point of view.

This book may take a while to read but I would advise you to luxuriate in it. To read every sentence once slowly and sometimes twice because there were some beautifully poetic moments that I especially wanted to savour.

Read it? Thoughts?

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