Both these recent reads have complex family dynamics at the centre, while addressing wider political issues in very different ways. In the first, we follow a middle-class Asian family forced to migrate from Uganda to Britain on the whim of a tin-pot dictator; in the second, three siblings re-enact their childhood rivalries around their mother’s deathbed as bushfires envelop their country and the world colludes in its own extinction.
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Kololo Hill by Neema Shah
Asha has recently moved to Kampala from a smaller town in Uganda to join her new husband and his family halfway up Kololo Hill. The wealthier Asians occupy mansions higher up, while the Africans inhabit the slums lower down. And that is part of the problem: when President Idi Amin needs to transform envy into enmity, families with their roots in India make credible candidates for demonization. In 1972, he gives 80,000 Ugandan Asians ninety days’ notice to leave.
I remember this from my childhood, as their arrival in Britain, stripped of their possessions beyond what they could carry, was shown on the evening news. But there was a lot I didn’t know about their forced migration, and Neema Shah’s engaging debut novel has helped fill some of the gaps.
The narrative focuses on three members of the household – Asha; her mother-in-law, Jaya; and brother-in-law, Vijay – in the months leading up to their expulsion and in rebuilding their lives in a colder climate. I liked how the author, whose grandparents migrated from India to East Africa and from there to London, didn’t shirk from depicting the Asians’ own racism and indifference to their compatriots’ poverty (which I observed in Tanzania three decades later). Not that that’s any excuse for the violence enacted upon them through the dictator’s craziness; nor were they the only ethnic group to suffer. Ugandans of African descent, but the wrong tribe, were simply disappeared.
The novel illustrates how forced migration splits families: in this case, because they’d hedged their bets at independence, some members claiming their rights to British passports while others chose Indian. But attitudes divide them as much as documentation: while some readily adapt to a new country and culture, others continually hanker to return.
There’s a resettled Ugandan Asian in the care home, along with Matty, in my neglected WIP. Like the family in this novel, Joshil’s roots are in Gujarat, where I spent a few weeks in the mid-1980s. I doubt I’ll be able to use it in my novel, but I enjoyed being reminded of how bhai (brother) and ben (sister) are tagged onto names as terms of endearment. (Yes, this review is all about me!)
A family story about politics, trust and loyalty, migration and home, thanks to publishers Picador for my advance proof copy. Click the image for other novels about migration and refugees.
I remember this from my childhood, as their arrival in Britain, stripped of their possessions beyond what they could carry, was shown on the evening news. But there was a lot I didn’t know about their forced migration, and Neema Shah’s engaging debut novel has helped fill some of the gaps.
The narrative focuses on three members of the household – Asha; her mother-in-law, Jaya; and brother-in-law, Vijay – in the months leading up to their expulsion and in rebuilding their lives in a colder climate. I liked how the author, whose grandparents migrated from India to East Africa and from there to London, didn’t shirk from depicting the Asians’ own racism and indifference to their compatriots’ poverty (which I observed in Tanzania three decades later). Not that that’s any excuse for the violence enacted upon them through the dictator’s craziness; nor were they the only ethnic group to suffer. Ugandans of African descent, but the wrong tribe, were simply disappeared.
The novel illustrates how forced migration splits families: in this case, because they’d hedged their bets at independence, some members claiming their rights to British passports while others chose Indian. But attitudes divide them as much as documentation: while some readily adapt to a new country and culture, others continually hanker to return.
There’s a resettled Ugandan Asian in the care home, along with Matty, in my neglected WIP. Like the family in this novel, Joshil’s roots are in Gujarat, where I spent a few weeks in the mid-1980s. I doubt I’ll be able to use it in my novel, but I enjoyed being reminded of how bhai (brother) and ben (sister) are tagged onto names as terms of endearment. (Yes, this review is all about me!)
A family story about politics, trust and loyalty, migration and home, thanks to publishers Picador for my advance proof copy. Click the image for other novels about migration and refugees.
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Anna takes time out from her architecture practice in Sydney, from her lover Meg and from her increasingly reclusive twenty-something son to visit her mother in Hobart, as she lies in her hospital bed. In a stuttered phone call, Tommy, her embarrassingly unsuccessful older brother, has summoned Anna and their younger brother, venture capitalist, Terzo, for a final farewell. Except that Terzo refuses to let death defeat him, and badgers the medics into a series of increasingly desperate and demoralising procedures. When Tommy protests it would be kinder to let nature take its course, Anna sides with Terzo. Not because he is right but because, since their other brother’s suicide as a teenager, Tommy’s role is to be the weak one. He cannot be allowed to win.
As their mother endures months of torturous treatments, her wish to die ignored, Australia burns. Anna follows the progress of the rampant bushfires on social media, excited and appalled. Somehow the environmental apocalypse is more tolerable than the peculiar ‘silent leprosy’ of her body. Starting with the disappearance of a finger, Anna painlessly loses her knee, an eye, her hand. Most alarming is that others seem not to notice, and remain complacent when parts of them begin to vanish too.
The teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg has asked Why aren’t you panicking? Booker-prize-winning Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan’s eighth novel is part of the answer. We adapt. We accept the extinction of species, habitats and fingers, while deluding ourselves we can colonise distant planets and conquer death. We can’t think for the noise of social media or the backdrop of machinery on which we depend. Lost in familiar places, we use our political and financial power to continue the battles of our damaged childhoods.
I’ve been a fan of Richard Flanagan since stumbling upon The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This is the best of the three of his novels I’ve read so far. Thanks to publishers Chatto & Windus for my review copy.
As their mother endures months of torturous treatments, her wish to die ignored, Australia burns. Anna follows the progress of the rampant bushfires on social media, excited and appalled. Somehow the environmental apocalypse is more tolerable than the peculiar ‘silent leprosy’ of her body. Starting with the disappearance of a finger, Anna painlessly loses her knee, an eye, her hand. Most alarming is that others seem not to notice, and remain complacent when parts of them begin to vanish too.
The teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg has asked Why aren’t you panicking? Booker-prize-winning Tasmanian author Richard Flanagan’s eighth novel is part of the answer. We adapt. We accept the extinction of species, habitats and fingers, while deluding ourselves we can colonise distant planets and conquer death. We can’t think for the noise of social media or the backdrop of machinery on which we depend. Lost in familiar places, we use our political and financial power to continue the battles of our damaged childhoods.
I’ve been a fan of Richard Flanagan since stumbling upon The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This is the best of the three of his novels I’ve read so far. Thanks to publishers Chatto & Windus for my review copy.
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