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The Shadow King

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020

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The Shadow King

Auteur(s): Maaza Mengiste
Narrateur(s): Robin Miles
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SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020

‘DEVASTATING’ Marlon James, ‘A MODERN CLASSIC’ Andrew Sean Greer, ‘BRILLIANT’ Salman Rushdie, ‘MAGNIFICENT’ Aminatta Forna, ‘EPIC’ Mary Morris, ‘WONDERFUL’ Laila Lalami, ‘UNFORGETTABLE’ The Times, ‘REMARKABLE’ New York Times, 'A MASTERPIECE' Washington Post

ETHIOPIA. 1935.

With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade.

Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers?

The Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.

 Fiction de genre Fiction littéraire Historique
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Ce que les critiques en disent

"The Shadow King is a beautiful and devastating work; of women holding together a world ripping itself apart. They will slip into your dreams and overtake your memories" (MARLON JAMES)
"Unforgettable. I suspect I won’t read anything more moving this year"
"Lyrical, remarkable . . . Breathtakingly skillful . . . The reader feels . . . In the steady hands of a master . . . Hirut [is] as indelible and compelling a hero as any I've read in years"
"With epic sweep and dignity, Mengiste has lifted this struggle into legend, along with the women who fought in it. Beautiful, horrifying, elegant and haunted, The Shadow King is a modern classic" (ANDREW SEAN GREER, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of LESS)
"Set during Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, this absorbing novel spotlights the African women who went to war . . . [Mengiste's] achievement in The Shadow King is to bring to life those women, and to depict them as dynamic entities, their capabilities, limitations and beliefs evolving under duress in as fully complex a way as those of their male counterparts"
"A brilliant novel, lyrically lifting history towards myth. It’s also compulsively readable. I devoured it in two days" (SALMAN RUSHDIE)
"A must-read . . . The Shadow King is a masterpiece . . . Brilliant . . . [Mengiste] is simply an outstanding writer, with an uncanny ability with words, metaphor, history and truth . . . I simply cannot recommend this remarkable book highly enough to anyone who looks for the best writing to tell compelling stories"
"Urgent and propulsive but also lyrical and meditative . . . An inspiring, harrowing portrait of an overlooked aspect of an overlooked conflict"
"Wonderful . . . The novel is an intimate portrait of human beings going about their daily lives with tensions and hardships, memories and love, which broadens out into an epic war narrative . . . The Shadow King is ambitious but effortless to read. For all the harrowing scenes, it feels hopeful and lyrical"
"The new Toni Morrison? Maaza Mengiste certainly seems worthy of the comparison . . . Epic in scale, intimate in detail; this is one story that's sure to stay with you"
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Robin Miles did an incredible job of bringing these great characters to life, she hit the right balance of narrator and actor. The book itself was an amazing story, giving the reader some Ethiopian history and a reminder that so much war history is missed when the world ignores the female perspective.

Recommended read

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Once in a while you stumble on a book about a place you know little of, set in a time that precedes your lived experience. The Shadow King is a historical novel set in the years preceding the First World War, when Italy invaded Ethiopia. Masterfully written, it tells the story through several characters: some women, some men, some Ethiopian others Italians, some masters, some slaves.
It is however the story of the Ethiopian women warriors that is at the core of the book and gives it such a fascinating perspective - one that has scarcely been explored previously. A story that needed to be told, a book that needs to be read.

The Shadow King

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