Kintu (Anniversary Edition) - by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi (Paperback)

About the Book

This 10-year anniversary edition celebrates a classic of Ugandan literature.First published in Kenya in 2014 to critical and popular acclaim, Kintu is a modern classic, a multilayered narrative that reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan. Divided into six sections, the novel begins in 1750, when Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom. Along the way, he unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In an ambitious tale of a clan and a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu's descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Book Synopsis

This 10-year anniversary edition celebrates a classic of Ugandan
literature.

First published in Kenya in 2014 to critical and popular acclaim, Kintu is a modern classic, a multilayered narrative that reimagines the history of Uganda through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan. Divided into six sections, the novel begins in 1750, when Kintu Kidda sets out for the capital to pledge allegiance to the new leader of the Buganda Kingdom. Along the way, he unleashes a curse that will plague his family for generations. In an ambitious tale of a clan and a nation, Makumbi weaves together the stories of Kintu's descendants as they seek to break from the burden of their shared past and reconcile the inheritance of tradition and the modern world that is their future.

Review Quotes

"A soaring and sublime epic. One of those great stories that was just waiting to be told."--Marlon James

"Magisterial."--Namwali Serpell, The New York Review of Books

"Ancestral curses often 'explain' a group's essential character. But Makumbi inverts that conceit: What if a curse expressed all the ways that families, cities and nations fail to cohere?"--Julian Lucas, The New York Times

"With a novel that is inventive in scope, masterful in execution, she does for Ugandan literature what Chinua Achebe did for Nigerian writing."--Lesley Nneka Arimah, The Guardian

"A masterpiece of cultural memory, Kintu is elegantly poised on the crossroads of tradition and modernity."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

About the Author

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan fiction writer. She is the author of three books, Kintu, Let's Tell This Story Properly, and, most

recently, A Girl is a Body of Water. Makumbi is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize. She won the Global Commonwealth Short story prize 2014 for her short story, "Let's Tell This Story Properly." She is a Cheuse International Writing Fellow (2019) and KNAW-NAIS residency (2021). She has a PhD from Lancaster University and has been senior lecturer at several universities in Britain.