Olivia Cram
Professor Frank
Prize Fiction
Dec. 1 2021
The Shadow King Book Review
The Shadow King was Maaza Mengiste’s second novel and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This novel focuses on the story of the female Abyssinian warrior’s involvement in WWII that was originally omitted from historical documentation. Mengiste was born in Ethiopia, but left the country when she was four due to the Ethiopian Revolution. She spent the remainder of her childhood in Nigeria before moving to the United States. Her debut novel Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, which was published in 2010, is a story about a family struggling to survive the Ethiopian Revolution (Maaza Mengiste). I imagine her own childhood memories of the revolution is what really fueled this novel. When she had moved to the United States, she desperately started reading about Ethiopia, trying to connect her childhood memories of the revolution with actual historical facts and data. This proved incredibly difficult for her as there was nothing really written about the battle between Italy and Ethiopia, rather it was all an oral history (Kukuwa Ashun, Interview). Because of this, Mengiste moved to Italy to help with her writing of The Shadow King. The Shadow King, much like Beneath the Lion’s Gaze, is also a novel of the Ethiopian Revolution. However, The Shadow King focuses more on the female warrior’s involvement in the revolution and the details of the battle rather than a specific family’s struggles with the revolution. Part of what makes this novel so impactful and important is that Mengiste is essentially writing a history that nobody has seen or heard of before. Mengiste spent so much time and effort piecing together her own memories and the memories of others to put together a novel that was both educational and engaging. I can understand why this novel was nominated for the Booker Prize, but I think it’s depth and complexity work against the novel to make it more difficult to read and feel more like a chore than leisure. Overall, I think this is why it was shortlisted rather than the winner.
The novel starts after the war has ended with a character named Hirut, who was a former warrior in the revolution. Hirut starts looking through a box of photographs, which triggers an onset of flashbacks to the battles of the revolution as she feels she can hear the voices of dead soldiers calling to her: “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” (Mengiste 6). Mengiste uses these photographs to trigger flashbacks within Hirut that allow for a creative way for Mengiste to introduce battles within the war without writing them in the way you would read a history book. I think this scene was an incredibly powerful way to start the novel as the reader is already gaining a sense of the importance of this revolution to its people and feeling a sense of duty to read about it. When I first read this, I felt a sense of guilt for not knowing about this history even though it’s not documented anywhere. Starting this novel in this manner captures the reader into feeling a sense of urgency to uncover this portion of history and recognize those warriors involved who have received no credit or recognition. This essentially is Mengiste’s reason for writing this novel. Not only is she attempting to piece together the events she remembers as a child, but she is battling with the lack of historical evidence of the Ethiopian Revolution in entirety.
The complexity of this novel and the topics surrounding it justify its nomination for the Booker Prize. The telling of historically important events that have been omitted from any sort of documentation is inarguably important work. Along with that, Mengiste spent a large portion of her life uncovering the events of her past that she didn’t have physical evidence of, only oral. I think what holds this novel from being the overall prize winner lies in the complexity of the events and the weight of them. For myself, this book was a little difficult to push through, and I still haven’t been able to finish it. I do find it engaging and the material is incredibly fascinating, but the topics are so heavy that I find myself feeling drained and tired after reading just a few sections. I’m not entirely sure of a solution to this, as I don’t feel there is anything that should be cut out or written differently. If I were a Booker Prize judge, I would have shortlisted this novel simply because some of the other nominees were easier to read and understand than this one. This is not to discredit Mengiste’s work or the meaning behind her work, as I do agree that it is incredibly important. Overall, I would have either tied this with the Booker Prize winner, Shuggie Bain, or it would have been either my second or third choice.
Works Cited
“Kukuwa Ashun, Interview with Maaza Mengiste.” Washington Square Review,
https://www.washingtonsquarereview.com/kukuwa-ashun-interview-with-maaza-mengiste.
“Maaza Mengiste.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Oct. 2021,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maaza_Mengiste. Mengiste, Maaza. The Shadow King. W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.
