Maaza Mengiste’s second novel The Shadow King, about the Ethiopian women who fought against the Italian invasion in 1935, “is a beautiful and devastating work; of women holding together a world ripping itself apart” (Marlon James) and “a brilliant novel…compulsively readable” (Salman Rushdie).

An essayist, photographer, and documentarian as well as a novelist, Maaza was a recipient of the 2020 American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Literature Award.

Read her piece  in Lithub about the writing of The Shadow King, listen to an interview, or read one of our favorite essays by Maaza, “This is What The Journey Does” in the New York Review of Books.

Maaza was scheduled to teach a fiction workshop for the third time at Disquiet 2020, and she will, we hope, reprise that role at the rescheduled program in 2021.

You can order The Shadow King here or anywhere books are sold.