Kololo Hill

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The second half of Kololo Hill focuses on the family’s attempts to settle into their new lives in the UK. If anything, this book made me want to read about Idi Amin’s dictatorship from a Black author or a Black perspective. i don't understand a single character's motivations and their thoughts are so unrealistic that it's clear they only exist for the reader to learn something about the character's past.

The author has done an amazing job in painting a complete picture, which is painful, gruesome, and heartbreaking, but a real story of the life of Ugandan Asians at that time. Growing up, I had heard his name thrown around and I knew he was a bad person but I didn’t understand why. Through every sense, Neema Shah portrays the landscape and life, the scents and tastes of Uganda with such clarity that I almost yearned for it myself.It furthermore shows the cruelty, harassment and public beatings by Idi Amin’s soldiers towards Asians and other minor Ugandan tribes. Amin’s dictate, motivated by insecurity and greed, was particularly cruel in this regard, giving families only 90 days notice to leave the country, under the threat of rape, internment or, in many cases, murder. At one point I really want to sympathize with Pran but I honestly didn’t understand most of the things he did. Life for them as Asian Ugandans is very ordinary: managing the family business, visiting friends and going to the temple; believing the country’s problems aren’t their own.

Kololo Hill, in and of itself is synonymous with this implied hierarchy where the higher you go up the hill, the richer and more influential are its residents. 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. Before publication, Kololo Hill won The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Live, was shortlisted for the Bath Novel Award and First Novel Prize and was longlisted for various other writing awards. Although this is fiction, it is a creative non-fiction in as much as it portrays families who- through no fault of their own other than being industrious - were expelled from the country on ninety days notice having to leave everything they worked for and handed down to them behind, including money. Poignant and beautifully written, Kololo Hill is historical fiction, it deals with the decree that saw Ugandan Asian’s kicked out of the country by Idi Amin in 1972.

There were also the cultural differences, the hardship, and the hostility that they faced on a daily basis. What's more unique about this debut novel are the detailed characters, especially women protagonists. The effect of this brutal, political climate is beautifully drawn as the Ugandan Asian family in Kololo Hill come fully to grips with what they are about to lose. These sensuous details bring to life the hot and spice filled air of Uganda, marking the loss of it when the family exile to Britain, to a cold winter and a British diet. I don't have a creative writing BA or MA and I didn't start writing my first novel until I was in my late thirties.

I'll be perfectly honest, before I read this novel I knew nothing of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda but upon finishing Kololo Hill, I feel well informed, but actually I think I'd now like to know more.Motichand and Jaya arrived in Uganda from India many years ago, and the beautiful green hilltops of Kololo Hill are very much their home now, they’ve made a decent life for themselves and have been very happy. A poignant, beautiful book that explores what it is to be forced to leave your country and rebuild your lives in another. It is this question which is explored in the second half of the book, once the sadly incomplete family lands in the UK and are faced with the challenges of language, culture and the casual and overt racism of their new environment.

That most precious of places - a safe haven from all the madness that takes place in the big outside world.What was refreshing was that each and every character was well-rounded, we were given the chance to really get to know them all, every person just as important as the rest. Asha and Pran’s marriage is already complicated by the keeping of secrets and this plays beautifully into the growing tensions. Vijay, Pran's younger brother, has a bit more of a personality, but that's very inconsistent, swinging from being a family-oriented son to an independent man with explanation. My heart goes out to faithful December, strong-willed Asha, resilient Jaya, good-hearted Vijay and happy-go-lucky Motichand.