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The Shadow King

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The Shadow King

By: Maaza Mengiste
Narrated by: Robin Miles
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About this listen

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020.

A Times Audiobook of the Week.

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. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers?

©2020 Maaza Mengiste (P)2020 Canongate Books Ltd
Fiction Literary Fiction Italy War

Critic Reviews

"Beautiful and devastating." (Marlon James)

"Unforgettably conveyed by the narrator Robin Miles, whose upbringing in the ethnic melting pot of New Jersey has enhanced her gift for entering into character...the listener never feels lost, only more deeply involved. It is easily the best title on the Booker 2020 longlist." (Christina Hardyment, The Times)

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