Purchase a copy for yourself here!
The story of war has always been a masculine story, but this was not true for Ethiopia and it has never been that way in any form of struggle.
This is a line from the Author’s Note of Maaza Mengiste’s second novel, The Shadow King. The novel is a stunning effort to reclaim the battle epic in both literature and history from traditional male hegemony. The Shadow King is a tribute to the female warriors who defended Ethiopia from Italian invasion at the onset of the second world war, and a celebration of the bravery that has long been forgotten by history. The novel begins pre-invasion, with a young woman, Hirut, who is forced to work as a servant in the home of a local military leader, Kidane, and his wife, Aster, after the death of her parents. Kidane takes a special interest in Hirut, which creates tension in his marriage, causing Aster to lash out at Hirut. Kidane soon becomes frustrated when Hirut refuses his advances, and then both Kidane and Hirut begin projecting their own marital frustrations on Hirut, brutalizing her in a variety of ways.
When invasion is imminent, Kidane begins training a group of local soldiers for his resistance army, and a rebellious spirit sweeps across the nation. Aster, who is tired of being useless around the house, gathers a group of local women who are eager to fight the oncoming invasion. Hirut joins the female resistance fighters, and they begin training in the nearby mountains. Kidane is continually dismissive of the female fighters, telling Aster that her group can serve as medics to his soldiers, but cannot put themselves in actual danger. Tensions come to a head when Kidane rapes Hirut outside of the camp base, further exacerbating the tension between Aster and Hirut. The power dynamic between the two women and Kidane is extremely fraught, as Aster herself was raped by Kidane on their wedding night, and both women struggle to carve out a place for themselves in the resistance separate from the man who has heretofore controlled their lives.
Mengiste maps the struggle to defend one’s own nation onto the struggle to defend one’s own body, as the women’s instinct to protect their country clearly stems from the feminine instinct of self-preservation. Both Aster and Hirut have been steeling themselves from the horrors of physical invasion since birth, hardening themselves to the terrors of existing as a woman. Their battle becomes a national one, and they turn their attention from the immediate dangers of Ethiopia toward the dangers of invasion. Mengiste emphasizes how instrumental these women are to the cause, they are not just warriors in appearance, but contributing members of the resistance forces. It is Hirut who notices the resemblance between a peasant resistance fighter and the emperor who has fled Ethiopia, and is thus responsible for the massive morale boost that comes from the disguised peasant whom Ethiopians believe to be their brave emperor, The Shadow King.
In a novel like this, Kidane would be the obvious choice for a hero, the wealthy landowner turned revered military general. But he is not the hero of this story, he is an antagonist whose fragile conception of masculinity drives him to attempt to possess the women around him, through rape, marriage, or more general manipulation. This novel defines bravery without the traditional masculine undertones, recasting it as a feminine trait that encompasses survival, resistance to oppression, loyalty, and self-possession. The war heroes of this novel are the women like Hirut and Aster, or the female resistance spies, who commit to preserving their homeland against the tyranny of invaders. Mengiste describes her characters with a lyricism fit for epic war heroes, and weaves together a variety of nuanced storylines of resistance to form a cohesive and incredibly readable narrative that strikes the perfect balance between musicality and rawness.