Written by Maaza Mengiste, published in 2019, and long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2020, this book has plenty to recommend it.

The narrative foregrounds the Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935 to 1936 or 1941, depending on who's counting), and the Ethiopian fighters -- particularly the women -- who resisted the Italian colonizers.

The stories of these women are rarely told. Indeed, Mengiste had almost finished the novel before she discovered that her own great-grandmother, Getey, had fought in this conflict. Clearly a feisty character, Getey brought her father before the village elders to demand the immediate transfer of the gun that she would eventually inherit -- the same gun that her father was planning to give to Getey's fiance -- so that she could use it to enlist (she won the case).

But the entire story of this conflict has to some degree been whited out. Researching in Italy, Mengiste finds that returning soldiers had not wanted to talk about their experiences, because by then these events were part of a general narrative of defeat (the British and other forces, aided by continued Ethiopian resistance efforts, drove the Italians out in 1941, as part of the wider operations of World War II). What is more, it was a long time before the brutality of the war's conduct was acknowledged. It wasn't until 1996, for example, that the Italian Ministry of Defence admitted to using mustard gas in the conflict (and this is just one element in the gamut of war crimes that Mengiste describes; others include concentration camps, monstrous forms of execution, and wholesale massacres).

As Isabella Pasqualetto wrote when the Italian edition (Il re ombra) was published, the book recalls "a part of history that Italy has chosen not to remember -- or rather, a part of history for which Italy has chosen to provide a self-absolving and self-celebrating narrative, showing some things but hiding others".


The Italy that's more familiar, 2019



So the subject matter -- though certainly dark -- is compelling. The female Ethiopian characters are also well drawn. We meet Hirut, an orphan, who -- ostensibly as an act of kindness -- has been installed as a servant in the aristocratic household of Kidane and his wife Aster. Hirut, a person who would, to all intents and purposes, count as disempowered, becomes a resistance fighter, and gradually learns to deal with the torrent of bad stuff that confronts all fighters, but particularly women. Aster herself also champions the idea that women can do more than support the war effort behind the scenes. Imperious and undaunted, she leads her female forces into battle.

Of the male Ethiopian characters, it is Kidane whose portrayal is the most rounded and complex. Courageous in battle, and relatively generous towards the highly-strung Aster, Kidane is in many ways admirable. But he had little comprehension of Aster as a fearfully young -- and tragically fearful -- bride, and it seems he never outgrew a tendency to be an abusive bully to the women around him (including Hirut, whom he rapes).

Haile Selassie, the only historical figure in the novel, is hauntingly portrayed as living in his own little world, racked by regrets, and never entirely in touch with reality.

But then there's the curious figure of Minim, whose name means "nothing". Strangely resembling the absent emperor, Minim is installed by Kidane's forces as the emperor's Doppelganger -- a figurehead uniquely able to inspire the peasantry to rally and resist. Although he figures in the novel's title, we don't meet Minim until a considerable way through the narrative, and we never really learn much about him. That was one of the oddities of the book, I felt.

On the Italian side, we are introduced to the vulnerable-but-sadistic Colonel Carlo Fucelli. More interestingly, we meet Ettore Navarra, a military photographer. As the child of a Jewish father in an increasingly anti-Semitic environment, he very much has his own problems. But his main role is to represent the propagandist efforts of the Italians. Documenting, photographing, and staging are always processes that colonizers employ to gain control over the broadcast narrative. As Mengiste explains: "Italy's wars to subjugate human beings, to enact violence upon them -- the camera came first, and the photographs developed a narrative of those groups of people that would justify the violence. Mussolini was well aware of the power of photography, the power of visuals. That Fascist period was an explosion of propaganda, of posters, of films... I wanted to make a character a photographer/soldier. What is it like to witness and participate and perpetuate violence all at the same time? Can the camera really be a shield for somebody or is it an instrument of complicity? Where is it that those lines start to blur?" Navarra never really finds the answer to those questions.

During her research, Mengiste looked for photographic records at flea markets in Italy. (Some of these are reproduced in the article just cited, and there's a extensive collection on the author's Project3541 site.) But piecing the puzzles together is not easy: "We still have to decolonize the archives... Because to be an African or to be a part of any group of people that has been colonized, when you're researching in the archives, it's not just research -- it's detective work that you have to do. It's not a simple act of looking. It's complicated by so many erasures that if you don't know what's missing, you don't know what to ask."



Onto these colonial power structures Mengiste also maps gender power structures. Coercion -- whether by friend or foe -- is never far from any of the women's experience. As Hirut comes to realize, the battlefield is in many ways her own body.

As Mengiste tells Rhianna Walton: "[The Italians adopted photography as] part of their war machine. The camera was a weapon, quite literally. They had photographs of seminude or nude East African women, and those were part of the tools used to recruit soldiers for the army to invade Ethiopia: 'If you come and join us, this is going to be an easy war, and look what you get as a trophy.'" Forced photography is part of what Hirut has to suffer while she is in prison.

In a perceptive review, Francesca Capossela points out that many of the book's characters, often in quite different situations, are required to learn that there is no way out of some situations, only a way through: "For Mengiste’s characters, escape is made possible by light and by shadow... But the most crucial function of light in the novel is its creation of shadow selves, dark twins for each character... When Hirut is captured on the battlefield and thrown into an Italian prison alongside Aster, she spends her days staring straight ahead, ignoring the taunts of the Italian guards in order to prove her worth as a soldier... The irony of women’s role in war, Mengiste suggests, is that they are already at war -- with the men that attempt to control them, with their own psyches. The female soldiers in The Shadow King fight numerous battles, in several arenas, including within themselves."



All this adds up to an interesting treatment of war, colonialism, and the site of conflict that is the human body (particularly the female human body).

But, although appreciative, I'm not as overwhelmed by this book as others are. Rhianna Walton, for example, describes it as "the finest and most fascinating novel I have read in a long time". For Michael Schaub, it is "a gorgeous meditation on memory, war and violence... one of the most beautiful novels of the year".

I think it was a little over-ambitious... By trying to cover the plight of Haile Selassie, and the backstory of Ettore Navarra and his Jewish refugee father, I felt the book bit off just that fraction more than it could chew.

In fact, I think "too much" might sum up my criticisms. Structurally I found it a little baroque. Interspersed in the narrative, we have sections labelled respectively "Interlude" (filling in a backstory), "Chorus" (issuing warnings, or commenting on events), and "Photo" (describing particular photos, often by Ettore). I found this atomization detracted from the overall flow. Stylistically, too, the writing often struck me as overly elevated, a little too lyrical and elliptical for its own good.

The characterization is somewhat patchy, I felt, even with the more robustly portrayed protagonists. Aster, for example, is a wonderful character -- until she fades from view. Other women remain as frustratingly sketchy ideal-types, and then just disappear (there's Fifi, for example, the beautiful, intelligent, courageous "whore/spy", and there's "the cook", the unnamed and almost witch-like healer, cypher, and guardian).

Lastly, though least significantly in terms of these considerations, I listened to an audio version, and wasn't a fan of the narration. I never understand why characters who are supposedly talking to each other in their native language should be rendered in accented English... It just feels patronizing and artificial...



So, far from perfect, but instructive and thought-provoking. And given the horrors taking place in eastern Europe at the moment, it's certainly timely to reflect again on the multi-faceted tragedy of war:

"There's no way out except through. There is no way out except alone..."