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A review by aegagrus
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
4.25
The New Yorker describes The Shadow King as "an epic of nationhood and resistance". In one sense, I agree: Mengiste has composed her novel using the sweeping, heroic register of patriotic mythology. In another sense, The Shadow King is more of a meta-epic; a contested epic. Her characters all seem to instinctively understand the significance of the moment into which they are thrust. As Benito Mussolini's Italy invades Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, the book's various narrators are all trying to fashion from this moment a defining story. They are choreographing an epic -- or, more accurately, multiple epics, in that each character's narrative vision is distinct.
Mengiste's attentiveness to pagentry and performance, to what is remembered and what is elided, has three notable effects. First, it allows her to be extremely clear about what is glossed over in our historical vision -- in particular, sexual violence -- and about the implicit and explicit sacrifices that are made for the stories we will eventually tell. Second, it helps her present nuanced characters, not by exonerating evil or destructive acts, but by treating each character as a piece of a longer thread of family and cultural influences. In effect, she sidesteps the challenge of managing readers' moral evaluations of these characters; their individual blameworthiness isn't the point. We are much more concerned with their place in history: from whence they have come, and where they are going. The result is that her characters are treated with a great deal of complexity and compassion. Third, Mengiste's exploration of what happens when a narrative runs its course and is no longer recognized is extremely effective. In particular,there is a brief but stunning scene at the end in which Minim, a peasant who temporarily played the role of a body-double for the exiled emperor, rousing his countryfolk to fight against the occupation, comes to terms with his renewed anonymity after the war has ended; with the secret weight he now bears.
The Shadow King is pretty dense with structural devices, including photographic descriptions breaking up the main text, a Greek chorus, and interludes from the perspective of Haile Selaisse, far from events on the ground. I found the photographs to be a really effective device; one of our characters is a photographer, and the contrast between the moments in which he takes his pictures and the stories told by the pictures themselves is trenchant. I also liked the Haile Selaisse interludes -- the emperor's sense of the Italian invasion as a problem he must first reconcile intellectually is very intriguing. I was somewhat less sold by the Greek chorus, as I felt that its sweeping, declarative tone -- and the points it was employed to emphasize -- were both largely present in the main body of the text already.
Misc. thoughts:
- Mengiste is very good at incorporating language differences, and different degrees of language fluency, into her scenes.
- The book's description in blurbs and on its jacket copy (presumably from the publisher) strikes me as a little inaccurate; this certainly is the story of a woman at war -- and of the sexual violence often glossed over in historical memory of warfare -- but not exclusively or even primarily. All of the characters who narrate parts of this story are important as Mengiste explores the construction and contestation of national and individual narratives.
Mengiste's attentiveness to pagentry and performance, to what is remembered and what is elided, has three notable effects. First, it allows her to be extremely clear about what is glossed over in our historical vision -- in particular, sexual violence -- and about the implicit and explicit sacrifices that are made for the stories we will eventually tell. Second, it helps her present nuanced characters, not by exonerating evil or destructive acts, but by treating each character as a piece of a longer thread of family and cultural influences. In effect, she sidesteps the challenge of managing readers' moral evaluations of these characters; their individual blameworthiness isn't the point. We are much more concerned with their place in history: from whence they have come, and where they are going. The result is that her characters are treated with a great deal of complexity and compassion. Third, Mengiste's exploration of what happens when a narrative runs its course and is no longer recognized is extremely effective. In particular,
The Shadow King is pretty dense with structural devices, including photographic descriptions breaking up the main text, a Greek chorus, and interludes from the perspective of Haile Selaisse, far from events on the ground. I found the photographs to be a really effective device; one of our characters is a photographer, and the contrast between the moments in which he takes his pictures and the stories told by the pictures themselves is trenchant. I also liked the Haile Selaisse interludes -- the emperor's sense of the Italian invasion as a problem he must first reconcile intellectually is very intriguing. I was somewhat less sold by the Greek chorus, as I felt that its sweeping, declarative tone -- and the points it was employed to emphasize -- were both largely present in the main body of the text already.
Misc. thoughts:
- Mengiste is very good at incorporating language differences, and different degrees of language fluency, into her scenes.
- The book's description in blurbs and on its jacket copy (presumably from the publisher) strikes me as a little inaccurate; this certainly is the story of a woman at war -- and of the sexual violence often glossed over in historical memory of warfare -- but not exclusively or even primarily. All of the characters who narrate parts of this story are important as Mengiste explores the construction and contestation of national and individual narratives.