The novel is set in Ethiopia during the Italian occupation (1935–1941). The first part, entitled "Invasion", deals with the war between October 1935 and May 1936 that led to the capture of Addis Ababa by Italian forces and the flight of Haile Selassie; the other two parts, "Resistance" and "Return", recount the bloody partisan war that deeply undermined Italy’s colonial ambitions in Ethiopia. Finally, a brief epilogue takes place in 1975, when Mengistu deposed and imprisoned Haile Selassie. In addition to historical research, notably that of Angelo Del Boca (Gli italiani in Africa orientale, Volumes I and II), the author drew upon photographic documentation, also from Italian sources. And it is precisely from the "photograph as memory" that the narrative takes its cue, right from the introduction of the protagonist: the servant Hirut. In 1935, a French photographer visits the home of an Ethiopian feudal lord and is asked for a portrait of the servants.

This is Hirut. This is her broad, friendly face with a curious gaze. Eyes full of light are suspicious but calm, (...) a pretty girl with a slender, attractive neck and slightly rounded shoulders. (...) She looks away from the lens, trying not to squint, her face turned toward the blinding sun. (...) No other way to remember the untainted body she once carried with the lightness of a child.

The depiction of Ethiopian feudal society and the condition of women is ruthless: brutal exploitation of the peasantry, total subjugation of women—even those belonging to the feudal caste—violence, and sexual abuse. Hirut is a proud young woman; she keeps the sword left by her father, out of affection and to assert the rank to which she believes she belongs; the weapon is stripped from her by her master, as women are not permitted to fight. Hirut’s persistent disobedience is punished by rape, and the other women, rather than showing solidarity, condemn her to ostracism. Her fate is not so different from that of her mistress: the aristocratic Aster, who is likewise forced to acknowledge her husband’s superiority, humbling herself. When Aster asks to fight, she is met with a flat refusal.

Get back here with your women. (...) She looks at him for a long time, long enough for the resentment to vanish from her face. She lets it fall between them like a curtain dropping onto a stage. Then she nods and walks away.

The condition of women changes radically when, following defeat, the resistance begins, and the role of women becomes pivotal to a struggle that requires the involvement of the entire population. We know from Angelo Del Boca that there were numerous and famous female partisans; these are historical figures who truly lived, even if transfigured by the imagination. Haile Selassie's exile dismays the Ethiopian people in their struggle against the Italians; a stratagem is devised: the resemblance between a beggar and the Negus is exploited to spread the rumor that the sovereign has returned. The man must show himself among the villages; escorting him is a magnificent Amazon: Hirut. From a humiliated and subjugated servant, the young woman becomes a fighter, essential to lending credence to the deception, but she is herself a heroine through her acts of valor and courage. At this point, a new character bursts into the narrative: Ettore, an Italian photographer of Jewish descent, who, out of fear of denunciation and sheer pusillanimity, complies in photographing the most horrific crimes committed by the Italians. These are dramatic pages of high narrative caliber. The author draws on the photographs of this forgotten soldier to document the savagery of our compatriots. Continuous roundups are carried out, and the captives—mostly the elderly, women, and children—are hurled into a ravine; as they plunge into the void, they scream their names, asserting that they had lived, that they were human beings.

This cannot be annihilated: let him repeat his name until that final fall, (...) and the echo of his voice is the world's dirge, the earth cursing this cruelty. (...) He had found a way not to hear their prayers and curses when they moved, with the elegance of a dance, along the crest of the precipice for that final photograph. (...) Every photograph had become a broken vow to himself, a breach in the defenses he had erected to ignore what he truly is: the archivist of obscenities, the collector of terror, a testament to everything that penetrates us and dissolves our self-esteem, leaving human beings dead.

The sprawling novel reaches its climax, dramatically epic; then, exhausted by so many horrific and inhuman images, it folds back in on itself in an implausible bond between the virile, determined Hirut and the fragile, hypocritical Ettore.

Let us dispel a possible misunderstanding: the novel is not an indictment of our country. The author charts a destiny common to women: independence and prestige are granted to them only when they contribute to the liberation struggle, in this case against the Italian invader. Hirut carves out a role for herself by fighting and risking torture, rape, and death; in doing so, she redeems herself from the violation she suffered, almost as if it had been her own fault. There is a strength in her that captivates us, particularly because it contrasts with Ettore's weakness of character and values. At the same time, the author seeks to recount the tragedy of Ethiopia: assaulted, defeated because poisoned by the criminal use of nerve gas (with tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dead among the civilian population), and subsequently subjected to a repression that spared no one. Unfortunately, Maaza Mengiste is no Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (see Half of a Yellow Sun on this site): she fails to build outward from her characters to tell the story of a people; the protagonists remain stereotypes onto which, nevertheless, the author unloads far too many existential themes (witness the relationship between Ettore and his father); the tragedy of Ethiopia is treated as an epic poem, burdened further by certain devices—such as the chorus and the reflective pauses on Haile Selassie—that are frankly redundant. The two levels remain separate; it is evident that the author feels far more at home when adopting lyrical and dramatic registers.

From the standpoint of writing, the novel gets off to a somewhat halting start; subsequently, the writer gains confidence and growing stylistic mastery, displaying a rich vocabulary and increasingly expressive syntactic forms. The excessive length does not help the overall effectiveness of the narrative, and it becomes an effort to reach the end.

Why read it? For us Italians, coming to terms with colonialism is indispensable.

The Shadow King (The Shadow King)