This is Maaza Mengiste, novel The Shadow King.
It was actually a Christmas gift that, because of uni I have not got round to reading until now! It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 2020, and narrowly missed out first place to Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (Check out my review for it!).
Personally I prefer the Shadow King. To me, it offers more in terms of experimentation with language, themes , structure and to put it simply I have not read something like it before. I confess when I first began reading it her language style and the amount of imagery she uses put me off a little. However, her interjection of a ‘Chorus’ to the narrative altered the way I read the novel. Instead of reading it as a book, I treated it as a long poem instead. It was from this change of attitude where I began enjoying and appreciating it a whole lot more !
[Digression : A ‘Chorus’ in is a concept derived from the Ancient Greek playwrights. A chorus can be understood as a spectator or observer to the dramatic action in a play, who comments on the actions and thoughts of the characters, without interfering with the plot. The chorus, is not a character but rather a plot device that gives the reader/audience extra information or moves the story along!]
I believe with this neutral voice; presenting both sides of the conflict Mengiste can draw attention to the challenging difference between experience, memory and what we understand as, ‘history’.
Whilst it is fiction, the author confesses at the novels end that the story has arisen from tales told by her parents and relatives whilst growing up. Mengiste’s maternal great-grandmother was one of many Ethiopian woman to fight alongside male soldiers for the Emperor. She sites the erosion of these stories as being a result of not just a colonial recording of history but also a patriarchal whitewashing of these female soldiers role. The memory of their lives having been reduced to ‘word- of mouth’ and faded documents.
Not wanting to spoil the novel, one particular moment where I saw this exploration of history in the book was the way Mengiste described the execution of a Ethiopian solider, by the Italian army (sorry to bring up something upsetting). (I believe this also shows the absolute genius of Mengiste’s writing and plot!)
Firstly, she describes the scene in the war, as it happens which is the man being killed and he is described as being quietly passive but ‘brave’ in the face of death.
Then in the following chapter, time flashes forward to the 1970s, where an Italian war photographer recounts the moment very differently, from how it actually happened (e.g. he says to a reporter the soldier was a danger being violent and outspoken).
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