Ho voluto leggere questo romanzo dal momento in cui ho letto le citazioni postate dall’account Twitter di Einaudi in occasione della sua pubblicazione in Italia. Adesso che l’ho letto, però, quasi ne sono pentita, non tanto per la storia raccontata, quanto piuttosto per lo stile dell’autrice, che non mi è proprio andato giù e mi ha annoiato a morte durante la lettura.

Il mio problema è stato che da un romanzo storico mi aspetto uno stile più asciutto e interessato a farsi da parte in favore degli eventi narrati. Mengiste, invece, ha fatto l’esatto contrario, infiorettando la sua prosa con una retorica che per me ha finito anche per inficiarne il realismo in alcuni punti. Mi è sembrata quindi una scelta decisamente infelice e mi ha reso la lettura così faticosa da essere quasi respingente.

Il dispiacere è ancora più grande se penso al fatto che la storia è raccontata in modo da sottolinare il ruolo delle donne etiopi nella resistenza all’invasione dell’esercito fascista e che abbiamo tanto bisogno di leggere e diffondere queste storie, così a lungo ignorate. Il dispiacere è ancora più grande se penso a come esce distorto questo punto di vista dallo stile di Mengiste, che a momenti sembra quasi morbosa nel descrivere le violenze perpetrate ai danni delle donne etipi. Ovviamente non metto in dubbio che siano avvenute, ma Mengiste non dà l’idea di volerle semplicemente raccontare, ma di voler indugiare sui dettagli.

Un altro elemento rovinato è stata la presenza di Ettore, un personaggio che intende mostrare la non assolutezza del ruolo di vittima e carnefice: una sola persona può essere entrambi in circostanze e ambiti diversi. Ettore è ebreo ed è ovviamente una vittima dell’antisemitismo del governo fascista; allo stesso tempo, però, è il fotografo dell’esercito e il carnefice che immortala la violenza dei commilitoni. In lui i due ruoli si mescolano e a volte è difficile scinderli del tutto: peccato che – di nuovo! – lo stile di Mengiste renda questo conflitto torbido e ne depotenzi la capacità di turbare lǝ lettorǝ.

Se avete letto questo romanzo, fatemi sapere come vi è sembrato e se sono solo io a essere troppo stucca con questi stili troppo altisonanti. ( )

Could not stay with it. Well written, but confusing for post-modern rather than narrative reasons. Could not get absorbed enough to stick with it. I should note, trying to read in October of 2020 is difficult.

CW: this book contains violence, including of a sexual nature.

I first fell in love with the gorgeous art work of the cover for The Shadow King while browsing NetGalley, but I knew I HAD to read this book after looking at the blurb. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia during WWII is afforded very little (if any) space in history text books around the world, but as an Italian woman, I was even more aware of really how little I knew of this chapter in history.

The Shadow King is, of course, not a history book, but, being based on the author's own family history and extensive research, it provides a snapshot of life in a country at war. Following both the Ethiopian and the Italian armies, The Shadow King features an impressive cast of unforgettable characters. I was very impressed at how well most of these were painted, as almost every character, even the ones we meet only a few times, felt complex and real. The book avoided falling in the good people/bad people trap, showing time and again how light and dark, cruelty and kindness can co-exist within each individual.

The pacing was slightly uneven, with some sections being rather action-packed, and others moving much more slowly. Normally, this would bother me quite a bit, but for some reason it just seemed to work here. I also really liked the author's style. The prose was beautiful and often lyrical, although it felt slightly overbearing at times and occasionally made for some very confusing sentences. In particular, the lack of conventional punctuation and the absence of quotation marks to introduce dialogues (think Saramago) definitely needed some getting used to, and may be off-putting to some readers.

The one thing that made this stop short of a 5-star rating for me was the fact that, for a book wanting to focus on the forgotten contribution of women in war, there really weren't that many women in the main cast. Hirut and Aster were really the only fully-fleshed out female warriors, while we were introduced to numerous male fighters in Kidane's camp. While I loved getting to know Hirut and Aster, exploring their complexities and their backgrounds, I would have definitely preferred to see more of other female characters, such as Fifi or any of the numerous unnamed women in Kidane's army.

Overall, this was a very interesting read, tackling a lesser-known side of history with grace. I will definitely be on the look-out for more of Maaza Mengiste's work!

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. ( )

This is an important and ambitious story. I wanted to love it, but I just kind of liked it. The pacing is off. The prose is overly ornate and though at times very moving, it mostly just obscured the message.

But the killer is the formatting. The formatting makes this book absolutely miserable. There are no quotation marks, making it impossible to tell if something was said or only thought and especially difficult to distinguish when multiple speakers were in dialogue. Worse - the point of view shifts between characters with no clue to the reader, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph. I had to reread a lot to try to get a grip on the story.

2.5 stars ( )

“Once, it was said that the emperor of Ethiopia was like a sun to his people. But these days have proven that we live and die in the shadows, the emperor thinks. We do nothing but hold dominion over all that rests in shade and fog. All else is an illusion, a falsified appearance, a ghostly twin that trails behind us, hungering after our every breath.”

I finished The Shadow King (2019) yesterday evening. Such an odd book.
I’m glad I read it, and it is a book that needs to exist because it brings a part of history that tends to be sidelined to a new audience.
As the author says in her afterword, and I totally agree, the role of women in the second Italo-Ethiopian War had been written out of history and needs to be retold.

No, my discontent with the book is not with its premise or story or intent, but with the delivery.

While the writing – very descriptive and metaphorical … almost but not quite purple – took me ages to get used to, by the end of the book, I really liked it. It was a part of the form of story-telling that one imagines in epic tales. It’s beautiful but not very practical or to the point. It demands a lot patience and attention from the reader.

I also liked the story itself and the way that Mengiste switched points of view between the different characters including Hirut, Ettore, Haille Selassie, etc. and used flashbacks to set up the story as well as parts of Aida, the opera (I do love Verdi), to tell what happens.

It was a very well thought out and complex book and I appreciated a lot in how this was not an easy read, how the book challenged the reader.

What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no “what happened,” there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with it, constantly renewing. Everything is happening at once.

But the crux of my discontent is the most horrible of all faults that a book can have: Having read 15% of the book, it became really, really boring and didn’t pick up until the last 25%.
And this left more than half of the book boring me with a stagnating plot, repetive descriptions of violence against women, torture, and an indroduction to so, so many characters who would perish shorlty after they were introduced.

Focus in close, Carlo Fucelli says to the cameraman as his men set up their barricades. Pan up slowly. Get wide shots of the prison and swoop right to capture the cliffs. Shoot from the rebels’ perspective. Get your stills of the landscape before the attack. The Abyssinians are on their way and we’ll defend our country as you have never seen. I will give you a battle worthy of the Roman Empire, worthy of the great Trojan conflict. I won’t send the tanks or cannons to destroy them before they approach. I won’t bring the planes to spray them with poison while they’re still getting dressed to fight. We will do this as our fathers did and win for Italy with bayoneted rifles and bare hands. Focus and zoom and steady the shots. Prepare for wondrous displays of bravery. Look! Behold the enemy now in the dust rising on the horizon. See their might but do not be deceived: they will come as Memnon came for Achilles. And they will die just the same.

Look, I get it. It’s a book about war. People die and people suffer the most horrible experiences. But describing these things over and over without moving the plot does not make for compelling reading. If anything, it seems gratuitous and I was looking for ways to skim these parts – which is not easy in a book that does not have quotation marks.
Also, for a book that is meant to cast a light on the women who took part in the fighting, why do we only get to know two of them? The rest of the characters and stories are all about the men? I know there was also “the cook”, but she didn’t even get a name, never mind a story.

So, overall, I think the book was an interesting read for its premise and concept and some of the writing, but it was also really disappointing.

Chorus

Sing, daughters, of one woman and one thousand, of those multitudes who rushed like wind to free a country from poisonous beasts.
Sing, children, of those who came before you, of those who laid the path on which you tread toward warmer suns.
Sing, men, of valiant Aster and furious Hirut and their blinding light across a shadowed land.
Sing of those who are no more,
Sing of the giants still amongst you,
Sing of those yet to be born.
Sing. ( )