In this monumental novel, Maaza Mengiste investigates the erased lives of the women who participated in the war of resistance against the fascist Italian invasion that began in 1935 in her native Ethiopia. Through the characters of "The shadow king" –complex and full of edges, with their lights and their shadows- Mengiste reveals the serious consequences of omnipresent violence, one that leaves deep scars, just like the one in the neck of Hirut, the protagonist of this novel. The Mussolini regime, complicit in the Nazi extermination plan, has no qualms about similar violence against Ethiopians in the war of occupation. But there is also other violence that falls on the women protagonists of this story, victims of a patriarchal society in which girls are subjected to forced marriages, sexual violence within marriage is normalized and servitude is accepted without any kind of questioning. Hirut tells Ettore: "Hear the dead louder and louder: We must be heard. We have to be remembered. We must be known". And with it the torrent of memory is unleashed. Let yourself be carried away by it and discover this epic novel without glory or heroes, this deed that abhors violence, this story of a war full of duels and wounds, a memory that caresses scars.