The Shadow King: A Novel
Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King begins after Benito Mussolini’s second invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, when a Fascist army armed with tanks and mustard gas defeated Ethiopians armed mostly with spears and outdated rifles.
Her heroine, Hirut, is an orphaned Ethiopian servant girl whose name means “freedom” in Amharic. Hirut’s strong-willed mistress Aster’s unlikeable husband, Kidane, leads the Ethiopian forces. Both women begin helping out the men but eventually see combat, take on important roles, and suffer the abuses of war. Heading the Italian forces is Colonel Carlo Fucelli, whose Ethiopian mistress secretly provides information to the Ethiopian side. Ettore Navarro is a Jewish photographer under Fucelli’s command who questions the war as Fascists examine his ancestry.
When Emperor Haile Selassie flees the country, Hirut and Aster arrange for a poor man to pose as Selassie, a “shadow king” who helps rally the opposition. When they are captured, Etorre becomes fascinated by Hirut. When Ethiopians overwhelm the prison, Hirut flees with a box of Etorre’s possessions, and years later, they rendezvous.
The Shadow King is told from an omniscient point of view, using dialogue without quotation marks, a chorus, and descriptions of still pictures. Ethiopians soldiers often defeat the Italians, who triumph using poison gas, but the focus is not on armies that clash by night.
Born in Addis Ababa, Mengiste’s book has many flights of lovely poetic prose. Scenes of rape and mutilation are rendered graphically, but now and then the plot seems far-fetched, and some scenes feel more observed than lived. Mengiste has unearthed the role of Ethiopian women who fought heroically in the war side by side with men, an unacknowledged contribution The Shadow King brings to light for the first time.
