During this trip, Kintu, after witnessing a minor transgression, scolds his adopted son Kalema with a slap to the head, which results in Kalema inexplicably dying and being hastily and improperly buried. It’s here we meet Kintu, an unassuming and sexually-pressured Ppookino (governor), who must journey with his entourage to greet the newly installed kabaka (king) of Buganda. The novel begins with the brutal rabble-led murder of Kimu Kintu on January 5th, 2004 – a date that recurs along with hay fever, twins and madness – before the novel shifts to 1850, and pre-colonial Uganda. Rather, Kintu is a novel that thrives on its compassionate investigation of the individual within the boundaries of an epic, within the boundaries of a nation's rapidly changing identity. It is an epic that doesn't ignore character for scope. There are numerous characters and it does rely, at times, on good memory.īut unlike so many donnish generational novels, Kintu is an entertaining, engrossing, and, crucially, intimate read. Its narration loops from the distant past to the present to the touchable past and back again. It is based around five multi-generational stories that scatter and shock and merge. Kintu, the debut novel by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, is one of these sprawling, epic novels. No term makes me shudder more than a novel described as a "multi-generational epic" (though "timely" is close behind).
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