Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa; it will be love, not politics--their passion for the same woman--that will tear them apart and force Marion to make his way to America.

"A breathtaking, tragicomic debut novel about the indomitable child of a scorned, formerly land-owning family who must grow up in the wake of Ethiopia's socialist revolution. Wisecracking, inquisitive, and bombastic, Selam Asmelash is the youngest child in her large, boisterous family. Even before she is born, she has a wry, bewitching omniscience that animates life in her Small Town in southwestern Ethiopia in the 1980s. Selam and her father listen...

"When Reuel Briggs, a medical student at Harvard, witnesses the performance of the beautiful singer Dianthe Lusk at a concert, he's infatuated by her talent and beauty. That next morning, Reuel is called to treat the victims of a train accident. Among them is Dianthe, seemingly dead, but he revives her using a form of mesmerism. Reuel falls in love with her and proposes marriage. Wanting to provide for his fiancee, he undertakes a dangerous but lucrative...

While the Ethiopian Civil War rages, a Catholic priest languishes in prison. Forty years have passed since he last saw daylight. His crime? Claiming to know the true location of Christ's cup from the Last Supper. Then the miraculous happens -- a mortar strikes the prison and he is free! Old, frail, and injured, he escapes to the jungle, where he encounters two Western journalists and a beautiful freelance photographer taking refuge from the carnage....

"En esta novela monumental Maaza mengiste indaga en las vidas casi borradas de las mujeres de su Etiopía natal que participaron en la guerra de resistencia ante la invasión italiana fascista que comenzó en 1935. A través de los personajes de El rey en la sombra complejos y llenos de aristas, con sus luces y sus sombras- Mengiste nos desvela las graves consecuencias de una violencia omnipresente que deja profundas cicatrices, como la que decora...