The real emperor of this country is on his farm tilling the tiny plot of land next to hers. He has never worn a crown and lives alone and has no enemies. He is a quiet man who once led a nation against a steel beast, and she was his most trusted soldier: the proud guard of the Shadow King. Tell them Hirut. There is no time but now. She can hear the dead growing louder: we must be heard. We must be remembered. We must be known. We will not rest until we have been mourned. She opens the box.
The Shadow King opens in 1974, with a woman sitting in a train station in Addis Ababa, waiting to return a box of photographs and newspaper clippings to a man who left them in her care thirty years before. Opening that box as she waits, the woman will be flooded with memories from the years of Italy’s second invasion and occupation of Ethiopia (1935-41); a forgotten time during which she and other Ethiopian women stood as warriors alongside the men who desperately attempted to fight off Mussolini’s invading army. This book is brutal: the violence of war, of slavery, of rape and torture and lynchings. It’s an examination of otherness (between races, between clans, between the sexes), and in language that can become exasperatingly flowery at times, author Maaza Mengiste nonetheless completely captured my mind and heart with this; I recognised that the writing was overwrought but the details affected me deeply. I can’t give fewer than four stars.
A memory: her father taps her chest the first day he lets her touch the rifle. This is life, he says. Then he settles his palm on the gun, This is death. Never underestimate either.I see a lot of reviews referring to the main character, Hirut, as a servant or a maid, but I think it’s vital to recognise that she was a slave; the orphaned daughter of a noble Ethiopian family’s indentured servant, when Hirut approached Kidane and Aster for shelter, she became their property. As I googled the situation, I learned that slavery had been entrenched in Ethiopian society for centuries, so when the invading Italians promised emancipation to anyone who fought alongside them, it’s no wonder that so many joined the ascaro; signing on with the Italians in a fight for freedom against their former overlords. The heart of The Shadow King seems to be about otherness and divided loyalties: African against African; slaves ambivalent about fighting alongside their “masters”; the League of Nations refusing to intervene against Mussolini on Ethiopia’s behalf; the ethnicity of a non-observant Italian Jew brought into question; the expulsion of foreigners during Ethiopia’s 1974 overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassie; women insisting on the right to fight for their homeland, resisting the orders to simply haul wood and cook meals and bandage the wounded men. People want to be forgiven for simply obeying orders; for adhering to custom; for being who they were raised to be, and Mengiste paints a picture of a fraught and complicated history.
There is, perhaps, too much overt presentation of root causes: a slave is brutally whipped, and in the next chapter, we see how the woman who had held that whip had been brutalised on her wedding night. In a later scene, we see how the husband on that wedding night had been raised to the act by his father; how every Ethiopian (slave or free) had been raised to resist invasive forces by a generation that had successfully repelled the first Italian invasion; how Emperor Haile Selassie himself had been raised to maintain Ethiopia’s independence. Every soldier, slave, and spy has a back story to explain their actions, and I’m still thinking on to what extent that means we are to forgive those actions.
In the author blurb for Mengiste, it states that, “Both her fiction and nonfiction examine the individual lives at stake during migration, war, and exile, and consider the intersections of photography and violence.” That’s exactly what The Shadow King is about, and photography figures very prominently. As Hirut goes through the box of pictures while she sits in the train station — photos that a cruel Italian Colonel insisted on as a record of his deeds — these proofs of the anticipation of violence are more affecting than pictures of violence in action could possibly be:
An Album of the DeadAgain, I will recognise that Mengiste’s writing style (a little florid, a few cutesy techniques [a chorus, “interludes” from Haile Selassie’s POV], overt connections) may not be to everyone’s tastes, but I was both enlightened by what I learned of Ethiopia’s history in this novel and emotionally affected by the characters. A really fine read (But worthy of a Booker? Maybe not?)
Twins, bound back to back. A young man caught mid-movement, features a blur except for that open mouth. A boy, lanky and broad shouldered, hands clasped together to beg. An old woman, immobile, defiant, chin up, eyes blazing. A man, face beaten beyond recognition, a series of swollen, broken features. A couple, wife clinging to husband, face buried in his shoulder, his ripped shirt exposing a long, angry cut. Two young men, wild curls thick against their necks, gripping hands, face-to-face, eyes only for each other. A young man, rigid as a soldier, a bloom of dark curls framing a furious and handsome face. A young man, bookish, eyeglasses, trembling, shaking head forcing a sweep of blurry features. A young man, hands bound behind his back, shoulders protruding painfully, a tender neck jutting forward, lips pursed to spit. A girl. A young woman. A nun. Two slack-mouthed beggars, Three deacons, steady eyes. Another girl. A young man, his brother, his father, identical faces, reshaped by blows, equally swollen. A girl buckling from fear, the top of her head, the face twisted in anguish and confusion. A girl, a woman, a young man, an elderly man, a man and his wife, a family of three, a defiant old man, a brother and sister refusing to let go of each other, a bent-backed woman, a tall, lithe boy. A blind man, opaque eyes. Twins again, bound back to back.
Signature: Ettore Navarr, soldato e fotografo
Signature: Colonello Carlo Fucelli, Ricordi d’Africa
The Man Booker 2020 Shortlist
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook
I've listed the titles in the order of my own enjoyment, and although my favourite from the longlist (Apeirogon by Colum McCann) didn't make the cut, I am not unhappy that Shuggie Bain won. This is the first time in years that I didn't try to read the longlist and I'm glad I didn't bother; what an uninspiring collection overall.
