Book Review: Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

There’s a scene early on in Kintu that has me nearly spluttering my tea. It’s the one where the menfolk keep it real with Baale, son of the eponymous Kintu, on marriage, sex and (fake) orgasms while they share the story of a grooming aunty who grabs the flaccid penis of her niece’s non-performing husband, asking, “Whose girl do you think you’re going to starve?” I laugh and even share it on my Twitter. 

However, my laughter has barely quietened down when tragedy follows swiftly after. It is the first of various forms of a curse that will plague Kintu and his descendants as retribution. The change of tack catches me unawares in a sometimes dizzying novel that trusts you have the good memory to keep up. I found the family tree at the beginning a helpful reference point to keep coming back to.

I first heard of Kintu from someone I admire on Twitter, Kinna Likimani (@kinnareads), who blogs about books, reading and world literature. Her enthusiasm about the novel had me noting it on my ever-growing “To Be Read” list.

The story begins in the anchoring present with the lynching death of Kamu Kintu in 2004, a devastatingly violent start that ushers in a sombre mood from the jump. From this point, the multi-generational family saga takes us back to 1750 where we meet Kintu. He is a Ppookino (governor) of Buddu province on his way to pay homage to the new kabaka in the kingdom of Buganda. Makumbi’s writing is especially rich and evocative for me here, vividly capturing the ever-changing landscape of dense rainforests, barren stretches and hillside caves. As Kintu and his entourage journey on, a rash action unleashes the curse that haunts and shapes the remaining books of the novel which focus on four descendants – Suubi, Kanani, Isaac and Miisi.

Kintu stretches in its ability to weave many lines into its web. The terror of mob justice. Mental illness. Incest. The holier-than-thou performance of surface Christianity. The haemorrhaging of Africa through European colonisation. The ravages of war. The ways in which families disperse and reunite. The portents of impending doom. And so on…

Each book sheds light on various strands Makumbi probes into, and could very well stand as novels in their own right. It is an ambitious meshing that sometimes makes the complex story a little hard to follow, despite burrowing in everyday. I’d barely sink into one book before I was upended into the next one. The stuff of a page-turner that demands several re-reads, you could say.

Makumbi creates intimacy. There is a scattering of Luganda vocabulary – unapologetically not glossed but well-situated enough to understand in context – and Ugandanisms in the use of language. It makes me feel that she is speaking to a specific Ugandan audience, but welcoming the rest of us non-Ugandans to listen in. It is an enduring detail I like about Kintu. I admire this refusal to be all things to all readers, particularly Western readers, which, often, the African novel is forced to pander to. Kintu is proudly Ugandan and unafraid to embrace the textures of its culture and society without needing to explain how it all meshes to a layperson. Selah. 

I was pleased when, with a little search, I come across a 2014 review by Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire speaking to this point.

Makumbi says that she knew that her book would be hard to sell to Western publishers. “Europe is absent in the novel and publishers are not sure British readers would like it,” she told Aaron Bady of The New Inquiry. “I knew this when I wrote it. I was once told, back in 2004, when I was looking for an agent for my first novel, that the novel was too African. That publishers were looking for novels that straddle both worlds—the West and the Third World—like Brick Lane or The Icarus Girl but I went on to write Kintu anyway.”

From a review by Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire

When Makumbi expertly pulls all the strands together through her entrancing storytelling, the long-awaited climax is unsettling in the way not-neatly-tied-up endings are, leaving you with more questions than answers. Kintu is searingly unforgettable, as subtle as it is sometimes a sledgehammer to the head.

Many have said that this engrossing novel will become for Uganda what Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is to Nigeria. Such comparisons are inevitable. Kintu is, of course, a powerful national narrative for present and future generations of Ugandans. So I get it, I do. However, a part of me wonders what the author’s private feelings are around the wont to often benchmark its brilliance with Things Fall Apart as if it cannot be assessed on its own merit. I suppose what I’m saying is, give people their accolades without the shadow of others over them.

Kintu is a triumph of a novel and a feast of reading that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Have you read it? What are your thoughts? Share with me in the comments below…