The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste

This book, short listed for the Booker Prize last year, is both brutal and beautiful to read. It is set in the second Italo-Ethiopian war, when Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and waged was on Haile Selassie. Occasionally the thoughts of the men involved in the fighting are told, but this is mostly a the book depicting the role of women in the Ethiopian resistance, illuminating hown the story of war is not only a a masculine story. There are four central female characters: Hirut, the young orphaned servant for whom the novel is a kind of coming of age in a war; Aster, Hirut’s jealous and violent employer who gloriously leads the Ethiopian women into battle. Then there is the Cook, a Madame Defarge–like mastermind, and Ferres, an Ethiopian prostitute employed by an Italian colonel who is also a spy for the Ethiopian army. This is a bloody and brutal story, but also one that glides along through the violence and emerges on the other side into a new way of thinking. It is magical and difficult.