i'm guessing East African South Asians will like Kololo Hill more than me -probably because there is such little representation of their history and culture in books. This may be the story of one fictional family but it represents the universal experience of those who are forced to relocate and make their homes elsewhere. Uganda comes alive in the capable hands of the author, the smells, the feel and the food, and in England their experience is, of course, discombobulatingly different. The later half speaks about the changed lives of the family and their struggle coping in London to make ends meet; the fear, insecurity, lack of intimacy due to separation in the early months of marriage, loss of pride and the insolent reminders to “go back to your own country” by those around. The novel also sheds light on the economic disparities within the Ugandan Asian community and the challenges of adapting to a new culture.

Food features prominently and exuberantly in the novel, both as a touchstone of culture and a measure of psychological and material well- being. Just to give you a background about why these Asians even went to Kampala, they didn't choose to go there, they were rather forced to go to Uganda by the British under indentured labor contracts to work on the construction of the Ugandan Railways.

The characters grapple with questions of home and identity, and their experiences as immigrants in Britain are portrayed with nuance and depth.

I am so happy I gave this genre a shot and this book proved out to be the best historical fiction I’ve read in a really long time. It is perhaps only through the lens of this distance that we can truly appreciate the legacy of these events, beautifully humanised through the struggle of one extended family as they are fractured and forced to leave behind everything they have known and owned in Kampala to make new lives in the UK. In a particularly beautiful passage, set during a harsh winter, the appearance of snow is likened to watching stars falling from the sky, mirroring both the interior and external world of the characters in a succinct and powerful way. I would have loved a little more focus on the disturbing political scenario in Uganda and globally describing the expulsion in more detail than what was described but I’m not complainin Shock can often render people literally speechless and thus she keeps the vision of death and butchery to herself.

An omniscient narration exposes the unfortunate mask of nationalism that often sidelines and ultimately nullifies the existence of minorities in the very same nation, through character-driven prose that also brings the history of British colonialism, economic disparity in the community, and what home really means to light. Kololo Hill is a wonderful novel, at once intimate in it’s focus on one family, but at the same time it captures the universal experiences of so many who have had to flee their homelands, finding themselves at the mercy of other nations willing, or not, to offer them refuge. It was interesting to read just how they saw things, the differences in their opinions and the fairness of everything political and perhaps racial that they had to face and endure.