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Text by Vivek Tejuja. Photographed by Joshua Navalkar
So here we are, at the last write-up of the Booker shortlist – The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. The book that speaks of war, or rather sings about it (given the lyrical nature of its prose) and portrays people’s lives amid something as grand and pointless as a war.
The Shadow King tells the story of Hirut, a young Ethiopian servant who finds herself on the battlefield. She and an unnamed female cook work in the household of a man named Kidane and his wife, Aster. And then the war comes – the Second Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935 when Italy attempted to colonise Ethiopia. The book is about how Hirut, Aster and the cook became warriors for a king who doesn’t exist (trust me, I am not giving anything…