In a feature on the American TV program PBS, the novelist Maaza Mengiste talks about her home country, Ethiopia, which she has always written about. Her family had fled the country after Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974. Although the intellectual class and citizens connected to the emperor were targeted, her family was able […]
Tag Archives: The Shadow King
Maaza Mengiste Receives $10,000 American Academy of Arts & Letters Award in Literature
Ethiopian-American author Maaza Mengiste is one of eight writers to receive the 2020 Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Each year, the Academy awards “literature prizes, totaling $350,000, to honor both established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry.” Mengiste was recognized alongside Viet Thanh […]
Namwali Serpell, Maaza Mengiste & Marlon James Are Finalists for Los Angeles Times Book Prizes
Finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes have been announced. The Ethiopian novelist Maaza Mengiste is nominated in the Fiction category for her second novel The Shadow King, which is set during the second Italo-Ethiopian war and centers on women who fought in it. The Zambian novelist Namwali Serpell is nominated in the Ray […]
These Books Helped Maaza Mengiste Write Her Ethiopian Warrior Women Novel, The Shadow King
Maaza Mengiste’s second novel The Shadow King is set during the second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-7). It tells the story of the Ethiopian women who fought in it and whose version of events have since been deprioritized in historical records. Born 36 years after the war, the Ethiopian novelist and editor of the anthology Adis Ababa […]
The 2019 Brittle Paper Award for Essays & Think Pieces: Meet The 5 Finalists
The 5 Shortlists for The 2019 Brittle Paper Awards were announced in November. Begun in 2017 to mark our seventh anniversary, the Awards aim to recognize the finest, original pieces of writing by Africans published online. READ: The 2017 Brittle Paper Award for Essays & Think Pieces: Meet the Finalists READ: The 2018 Brittle Paper Award for […]
Is There a Quota of 5 Books by African Authors for Every “Best 100 Books of 2019” List?
As yet another year draws to a close, literary lists of various sorts are once again filling our newsfeeds. During the first week of November 2019, BBC Arts released a list titled “100 Novels That Shaped Our World.” On that list, Brittle Paper noted that there were five novels by African authors which, in the words […]
Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King Optioned for Film by Wonder Woman Producers
Since its publication on September 24, 2019, Maaza Mengiste’s The Shadow King has been making waves. It was featured on the front page of the October 13, 2019, issue of The New York Times Book Review and notably mentioned in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The New Yorker. The latest sign of The Shadow King‘s success, however, […]
Maaza Mengiste’s Forthcoming Novel, The Shadow King, Set During the Italian Invasion of 1935, Centers the Ethiopian Women Who Have Been Ignored in Historical Records
In 2017, we ran a feature on why the Ethiopian writer Maaza Mengiste, who debuted with the acclaimed Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010), threw away the first draft of her second novel. That novel, The Shadow King, is now forthcoming from Norton on 24 September 2019. The 448 page book, which has earned an enthusiastic reception […]
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