S1E6 - S1.E6: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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S1E6 - S1.E6: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

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Episode Notes Hi its Ada. I hope you are taking good care of yourself and doing well. In this episode, I will be reviewing Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi. Ok, guys 2 quick things you have brought to my attention which I'll address real quick. First I know I usually say the author’s full name throughout all the episodes but it’s intentional to you know put respeck on their name as is spelled out on the book cover. My thinking is that that’s how the author wants to be addressed. And that’s that. I”m not gonna call them Jennifer or Angie or Abubakar or Zinzi. We’re not bffs. It’s really that simple. Something else that I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not is I usually avoid mentioning if the book is award winning or whatever. And it’s not to diminish the award or a failure to acknowledge. After all that information is publicly available anyway. The reason I try to avoid mentioning awards or literary prizes where possible is to refrain from making any false distinctions between award winning books and otherwise. Because while awards are incredible especially for minority writers. Awards bring more publicity to the book. Just like you know an oscar winning movie, gets more attention and viewership. Or in the case of books, more readership. People make buying decisions around prizes and awards and all that great stuff. So awards are extremely helpful for writers, especially less visible, minority writers. They can use all the visibility they can get. Also the awards come with considerable monetary compensation which is phenomenal for writers because writing is not like your typical 9-5 guaranteed income stream. Umm look at me. I’m podcasting. So, overall back to my point is that while awards are extremely useful and in many cases, actually necessary, and trust me, I’d love to win a couple of them, but honestly to me, awards are not the final or comprehensive determiner of what makes good literature. Literature like all other forms of art is subjective. There are so many magnificent books out there that could go toe to toe and even surpass award winning books by a clear mile. So that’s the reason I don’t bring awards up. Unless of course it’s mine. To me, great literature is great literature, whether or not it’s award winning. So, let’s start as we typically do with a teaser of what Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is about. Kintu is an intergenerational epic saga set in Uganda. So guys yeah, we off to Uganda in this episode. East Africa, baby! Quick sidebar. My claim to fame with Uganda is I was on a flight once that stopped in Entebbe airport to refuel and pick up passengers. So I’ve been on Ugandan soil or maybe more accurately, a Ugandan tarmac. Anyway this book kicks off in 1750 in the kingdom of Buganda (so the pre-colonial Uganda) Here we meet Kintu, after whom this book is obviously named. Kintu is a powerful and wealthy man, He is the Ppookino or governor of the Buddu province within the Buganda kingdom and is married to identical twins. Kintu has a lot of children, many of whom are twins. And he also adopts a boy, Kalema, who is the child of a Tutsi immigrant, Ntwire, who lives in their community. Kintu loves Kalema just like he does his biological children but something happens between Kintu and Kalema. And in response Ntwire, the Tutsi immigrant aka Kalema’s biological father, I hope you’re following this?, lays a curse on Kintu and his future generations. And so the book follows the manifestation of the curse on Kintu’s descendants. As I was reading this novel, very early on I saw the obvious influence of Chinua Achebe's seminal Things Fall Apart. And not because of the pre-colonialism aspects of Kintu but also because of that pivotal relationship between Okonkwo and Ihemefule in Things Fall Apart echoed in the relationship between Kintu and Kalema. Are you guys still following me? My suspicions were confirmed on page 312 where the author references Things Fall Apart as a work that is being explored as a sociological study by one of the characters. So it felt good to be right haha So let’s talk about what I loved about Kintu. The scale of this novel is grand. If this novel were a building it would be a stately manor. This book runs over 400 pages with about 20something major characters. I’m not gonna lie, when I bought the book and saw it ran 400 pages in small print, I was nervous because I didnt wanna spend that much time reading a book I wouldn’t enjoy. I’ll post a picture of my copy on social media so you’ll see what I mean. At over 400 pages it felt daunting to even start but I’m glad I did. It was compulsively readable, a page turner. Like I mentioned, this novel is intergenerational, spans several descendants of Kintu, the breadth of the novel is formidable. But in the hands of this writer, it was never an unwieldy beast. From Pages 1 to 410, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was always in charge. She never lost control ...