stay@home-Programm
Maaza Mengiste: The Shadow King
Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, Mengiste tells a story about women soldiers during the Italian occupation in Ethiopia in 1935.
Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Abeba in 1971. Mengiste spent her childhood years in Lagos and Nairobi but later fled to the US with her mother, who abandoned her in a refugee camp. Despite these obstacles, she started her studies in creative writing at New York University and finished with a masters degree in Fine Arts. In 2010, her first novel - 'Beneath the Lion's gaze', was published and soon welcomed with critical acclaim.
Her second book was warmly welcomed in the literary world. In 'Shadow King', Mengiste tells the story of Hirut, a woman who starts out as a servant and who eventually becomes a soldier for the Italian army in the Ethiopian war.
Namwali Serpell, Maaza Mengiste Sings a Modern Song of War, in: New York Times (13 October 2019).