Live Event: In Conversation with Maaza Mengiste

TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big
Tent - Live Events! Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one
of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre
for the Humanities. In conversation with Maaza Mengiste, author of
The Shadow King. This event is also part of the North-east Africa
Forum at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford.
Hosted by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English
(English Faculty, University of Oxford). Professor Boehmer is
currently the Director for the Oxford Centre for Life Writing
(OCLW) based at Wolfson College, and former Director of TORCH
(2015-17), and also leads on the 'Writers Make Worlds' project -
https://writersmakeworlds.com/ Biographies: Maaza Mengiste is the
author of the novels, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, selected by the
Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books; and The
Shadow King, a finalist for the LA Times Books Prize, a New York
Times' Notable Book of 2019 and one of TIME's Must-Read Books of
2019. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and
Letters award, the Premio il ponte, and fellowships from the
Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts,
Creative Capital, and LiteraturHaus Zurich. Her work can be found
in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Granta, the Guardian,
the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and BBC, amongst other
publications. In conversation with: Birhanu T. Gessese Birhanu was
born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and is now studying
Humanities at Kenyon College, USA. He is currently on a year abroad
studying English Literature at Exeter University, UK. He likes to
compose stories, work with the camera, and illustrate in ink pen.
Along with Korranda Harris, he recently interviewed Maaza Mengiste
for Africa in Words. Professor Richard Reid (History Faculty,
University of Oxford) is a historian of modern Africa, focusing on
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With a particular interest
in the culture and practice of warfare in the modern period, part
of Professor Reid's research interests includes the more recent
armed insurgences, especially those between 1950s and the 1980s.
https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-richard-reid
Professor Tsehai Berhane-Selassie Tsehai Berhane-Selassie taught
social-anthropology, gender, and development studies in
Universities in Ethiopia, the USA, the UK, and Ireland. She has
published on Ethiopian Warriorhood, and gender issues in Ethiopia.
'The Shadow King' Synopsis: Published by Canon Gate. 'DEVASTATING'
Marlon James, 'A MODERN CLASSIC' Andrew Sean Greer, 'INCREDIBLE'
Lemn Sissay, 'BRILLIANT' Salman Rushdie, 'MAGNIFICIENT' Aminatta
Forna, 'EPIC' Mary Morris, 'WONDERFUL' Laila Lalami,
'UNFORGETTABLE' The Times, 'REMARKABLE' New York Times 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. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor
and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms.
But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to
come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers? The
Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration
of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.