Kintu: From the winner of the Jhalak Prize, 2021
4/5
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About this ebook
An award-winning debut that vividly reimagines Uganda’s troubled history through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan
In this epic tale of fate, fortune and legacy, Jennifer Makumbi vibrantly brings to life this corner of Africa and this colourful family as she reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan.
The year is 1750. Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda kingdom. Along the way he unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. Blending oral tradition, myth, folktale and history, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu’s descendants as they seek to break free from the burden of their past to produce a majestic tale of clan and country – a modern classic.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist and short story writer. She has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her first novel, Kintu (Oneworld, 2018), won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 'Let's Tell This Story Properly', which featured in her first collection, Manchester Happened (Oneworld, 2019). She was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018 and lives in Manchester, where she lectures in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2020, she was selected as one of 100 Most Influential Africans of 2020 by New African magazine.
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Reviews for Kintu
47 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This made me question how much of our traditional beliefs we have forgotten and haunt us unkowingly. It is sad that Miisi( being my favourite charcater) had to be the lamb. A book worth spending time with.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've never read anything set in Uganda, so I was excited to read Kintu after seeing various positive reviews. The novel opens with a brief chapter about a man's death in 2004, and then rewinds all the way back to 1750 with the tale of a Ppookino, or provincial leader, called Kintu Kidda. This section tells how a curse was laid on Kintu and his descendants, and the rest of the novel moves through time to explore how this curse affects various members of the clan.So far, so supernatural - or so you might think. Rather than being a typical epic fantasy or historical novel, Kintu is more of an exploration of what it means to be Ugandan, particularly if you're male and living under the heavy burden of patriarchal responsibility, touching on issues like mental illness, abuse, incest and more. It's refreshing that, although Kintu treads through recent history, colonialism is not a huge theme, and Idi Amin is only mentioned in passing a few times. Instead, you get more of a focus on Ugandans' struggle to reclaim its own identity as a nation.For all of these weighty issues, though, I found Kintu to have a gentle humour throughout, too. The characters are so well-written - all of them, from the Ppookino to the girl left on her neglectful aunt's doorstep, really step off the page as living, breathing people. And it's important to note that women do play a big role in this novel, even though most of the main protagonists are men. There's so much I could say about Kintu, but really, you should just read it for yourself. I read afterwards that while the release of Kintu has been much celebrated in Uganda, the novel was initially rejected by British publishers who thought it wasn't palatable enough for their readers. I hope the growing success of the book here serves as a big middle finger salute to those publishers. I for one can't wait to read more of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's work.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Described as "the great Ugandan novel you didn't know you were waiting for".It begins with a 100 page story of Kintu Kidda in 1750; then 350+ pages with multiple stories of his descendants in 2004, but also flashing back to the 1970- 1990s to give backstory and context.Although the stories were interesting, I found it quite confusing because of the African names, and the fact that each new story started fresh, being completely unrelated to what I had been reading.The descendants did come together at the end at a reunion but it didn’t seem to me that all the ‘threads’ came together.Nevertheless, well worth reading to learn and understand about the history of the Ganda people. Be sure to read the foreword by Aaron Bady.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This story begins in the 1700's in the kingdom of Ganda. Kintu is the leader of this area with several wives including a pair of twins--one he loves and one he doesn't. The one he doesn't love has many children; the other is barren but takes an abandoned infant who is part Tutsi and raises him as her own. All children call all mothers mother. The family relationships are complex and intertwined. As the two sons are killed, a curse settles over the family.The remaining chapters each set in contemporary times tell the story of an individual descendant of Kintu. Each character is in a different situation and some are more aware of their connection to Kintu than others. Some are aware of the curse and believe it; others dismiss it as superstition especially Miisi who has been educated in Britain. The stories include humor, violence, child abuse, war, history, and love. The final chapter is a family reunion supposedly organized to lift the curse of the family. The individuals are brought together each bringing their own ideas of what needs to happen or how important family relationships are. The numerous uses of African words make the stories difficult to understand at times and each character (and there must be a 100 different characters) often are called by different names which is so confusing.I enjoyed the book as much as I could and appreciate being able to take a walk in Ugandan culture. The introduction to the book was also very interesting. "History looks nothing like this clash of nations and empires and states; however, true and valid such stories may be on their on terms; on the ground, history is the accumulated prejudices, hopes, and superstitions that we carry even if we don't understand how we acquired them, everything we don't know makes us who we are. History is a fabric of memories and fear and forgetting, of longing and nostalgia, of invention and recreation. History is bunk, and sometimes it is a good thing it is."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh man, I really liked this book. It took me a long time to get through, but it's so beautiful and different and layered that I feel like I'm just scratching the surface of understanding it.