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ordering. Hello and welcome to the History Extra podcast from BBC History magazine,

Britain's best selling history magazine. I'm Ellie Corthon. Today's podcast guest is the author

Maazam Angiste, who joined me to discuss her book a prize shortlisted book The Shadow King.

Published earlier this year, the book's narrative unfolds against the backdrop of the Italian

invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. And as you'll hear in the interview, it's inspired by Maazam's own

family history and based on a huge amount of historical research. So I think the best thing to do

to kick us off would be if you could give us an idea, give us a flavour of where you start your story

and some of the characters that you follow. Well, my story is set in 1935 during Mussolini's invasion

of Ethiopia in an attempt to colonize it. Ethiopia was independent. Britain had its colonies,

France had its colonies and Mussolini said it's time for Italy to have something too. So the invasion

was to establish an Italian presence there. And I had heard the stories growing up of a poorly

equipped Ethiopian army rising up and eventually defeating one of the most advanced militaries

in the world at that time. And the story is set in that period and goes through to the end of

the war in 1941 when Ethiopia somehow managed to win. I think for a lot of people in the West,

...