A review by archytas
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

challenging emotional medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was a "wow" book for me.  Mengiste achieves a lot in the novel, but it never feels unfocused or  scattered. The book is certainly an introduction to Ethiopia's history, but it is also a meditation on war. Mengiste pulls apart the dynamics of both military and misogyny., and the ways that the violence they breed bleeds into the world. The book also meditates on the nature of history. It is not uncommon, of course, for every character to have their own viewpoint in a novel, but Mengiste plays with how this then constructs a formal History - a retelling of events that has more authority than other retellings, probing into the messiness that an individuals experience of that history and how it colours those stories.
But lest this all seem too distant, this is a story of fully realised characters - not only our two point of view characters, but the cast around them. In a story of symbols - the very concept at the heart of the book is about the power of symbolism - Mengiste gives us people who are never symbolic, but always messy and real, often desperate and scrutable only in earned moments of connection.
This book won't be easy for everyone. There is murder, torture and rape. These are described through the fear, shame, humiliation they engender - and, as you would expect in a book with a photographer as character, sometimes in frozen stills. It is a book as much about hope and the power of humanity as it is about despair and the depths of it.
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