Book No. 20 of 2021
It’s very tempting for me to just copy-paste @cozyreadingclub’s review of this book; unfortunately our high school inculcated me with a strong aversion to plagiarism and so I must do the work myself (but I would like to cite her review and several discussions we’ve had about this book for helping me clarify some insights).
Almost every character in The Shadow King is somewhat frustrating (either because they do bad/problematic things or because of a classic case of I Would Not Do What This Fictional Character Is Doing) which is paradoxically refreshing, because a lot of white-gaze-y narratives suffer from Perfect Victim Syndrome where oppressed people are free of sins or flaws so they can be worthy of empathy. Not so here! This also serves to illustrate, with many nuances, the fact that even within “sides” in a conflict, there is hierarchy, classism, misogyny, and fundamental political disagreement.
It was also humbling, as with so many books I read, to realize that there are entire swaths of history I never learned about. I think the second Italo-Ethiopian war was maybe a throwaway line at most in one of my history books, and yet it was a conflict whose cause was, for so many people, worth dying for! What a gift, in a way, to be introduced to it with a narrative that centers the women—at multiple levels of the hierarchy—who fought in it. Lots of commentary on colonialism and how POC have been historically viewed through an infantilizing/objectifying lens, and how oppression sometimes plays a role in complicity.
Similar Reads
Certain aspects of the story reminded me of Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son.
Also found myself thinking of Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift.
The combo theme of forgotten women + trauma reminded me of Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls.