Kololo Hill: A Novel

Everytime I read historical fiction my heart breaks into a million pieces, history in many ways is a constant reminder that humans have been prejudiced to their own kind for reasons that cross the clear line of morality by whim or greed.Kololo Hill is a premise that introduced me to a slice of history I was totally oblivious about. A decree by Idi Amin, that changed lives of the Ugandan Asian community in the most unsettling and ruinous manner ordering expulsion with limited means.The author Neema Shah pens this terror through Asha, Pran, Vijay, Jaya and Motichand and December (Adenya) who spent a major part of their lives on Ugandan soil either by birth or as a land of opportunity to start a new life.Jaya, the aging matriarch bears the burden of keeping her family united in the unsettling times of curfews, gunfire and army checkpoints. Asha, the new bride longs for security that a marriage and home offer. Pran, the elder son endlessly works to revive and retrieve all that he can from the family business eventually losing it all to Amin’s devious decree. Vijay, has struggles of his own for being differently-abled.The book is divided into two where the reader gets to discover the horrors of the decree, the destruction of loot, killings and sexual assault by the army on those who are powerless and the escape of the Asian minority community to the safety of UK, Canada, India, USA, etc. The later half speaks about the changed lives of the family and their struggle coping in London to make ends meet; the fear, insecurity, lack of intimacy due to separation in the early months of marriage, loss of pride and the insolent reminders to “go back to your own country” by those around. From a life full of sunshine and lustrous nature to the formal and manicured London life, be it living in army barracks to finding a rooftop home in the cold and dull weather of their new place of living. Kololo Hill is a constant reminder of being forcefully uprooted and deprived- of a home, occupation and respect. It highlights human frailties and insensitivity that take toll of relationships that make life worthwhile.Neema Shah writes her debut with sensitivity and a comprehensive narration with multiple perspectives of all characters who are struggling trying to move on in their own ways trying to find the warmth of traditional home cooked meals, family banter, pride of proprietary and social gatherings of their old home in their new life. I would have loved a little more focus on the disturbing political scenario in Uganda and globally describing the expulsion in more detail than what was described but I’m not complaining, reading Kololo Hill has been gratifying and wholesome in more ways than one!Verdict: Highly recommended!

How often do you read a book that keeps you stunned by the irreplaceable grief, hardship, and dread that it feels like one's own emotions are wept in the pages? 'Kololo Hill' is power expressive and destroyed you from within. It's a personal loss. The most unknown history are the ones that wrench your heart most bitterly. Featuring the fate of Ugandan Asians who were ordered to leave the country for their good to settle elsewhere and perhaps redefine their notion of home, family, and settlement.'Kololo Hill' is a tale of a Gujarati Indian couple Pran and Asha and their family who were well settled in Uganda until one day they find themselves in a refugee shelter with other people restarting their life- work, and adjustments. The tale also explores the idea of the rulership of Idi Amin's troops. The mentions of hardships, harassment, and torture are picturesque(in terms of depicting the events in pen and paper), spin-chilling, and horrific to say the least. Shah makes a commendable debut with soul-steering yet captivating storytelling. The dictatorship over people would make you fearful and sense the tension of 1972.Neema Shah, the author develops strong characters around such a serious historic event. A family of few members- and each of them has something to offer, to make you relatable in uncomfortable situations.  Not only the men- but the women are proud of their families. These women- Jaya and Asha are the pillars of strength and teach how to be rooted in your origins. Each character is spectacular. Each has its voice, a typical trait that's unlikely to match others.Like Partition in India, the Asians who left their everything in the hope to come back carry the memories of their origin, their minds loaded with past lives.Through family sentiments, nerve-wracking events, Asian references, and raw human emotions Shah's 'Kololo Hill' would grip a reader page-to-page.It's work that would stay. It's incredibly remarkable. I have had an unforgettable experience while reading this book and the taste of it- bitter-sweet would linger on for quite some time. Best read of 2023.

In a recent interview, Hilary Mantel astutely summarised our enduring fascination with historical fiction when she declared “history is a process, not a locked box.” The charm of the genre resides largely in this fact - that both in its own time, and through the gaze of subsequent generations, history will always be subject to revision. So it is with Kololo Hill - Neema Shah’s extraordinarily moving and timely debut set amidst Idi Amin’s Ugandan Asian expulsion of 1972.It is perhaps only through the lens of this distance that we can truly appreciate the legacy of these events, beautifully humanised through the struggle of one extended family as they are fractured and forced to leave behind everything they have known and owned in Kampala to make new lives in the UK. 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.This last threat is where the novel begins, when Asha, a new bride, unwittingly stumbles across the terrifying evidence of just how far Amin’s forces will go to enforce their power in Uganda. Her silence about what she has witnessed may seem counterintuitive at first, until we realise that we have been placed in the midst of a situation where silence is the least dangerous of options.Here, and throughout the novel, there is a beautiful symmetry of theme, reflected in both its macro and micro worlds. Hence, the idea of secrecy and silence is not only symptomatic of the response to political events, but within the very fabric of the family the story follows: Asha, the young newlywed who discovers her husband Pran has not been entirely honest with her; Jaya, Pran’s mother, whose secret debt to their black Ugandan “house-boy” has profound and long-lasting repercussions, and Vijay, Pran’s younger brother who, hindered by a genetic disability, harbours frustrations about a life not entirely lived.The growing tensions of their life in Kampala are the subject of the first half of the book and the stakes are necessarily high. Pran, having rescued the family business from his good-natured but woefully lackadaisical father Motichand, is at last approaching some semblance of economic success, giving the family the material comforts that some in the area can only dream about. The African-born son of immigrants from India, Uganda is the only home Pran ( as well as Vijay and Asha) have ever known and this sense of identity and belonging is embedded in the narrative, making the emotional rift of Amin’s declaration even more profound. The novel is assiduous in the detail of their lives - the conversations, the climate, the assumed day-to-day routine of their existence, rendered in beautifully cinematic prose. This is a world the reader experiences rather than just reads about, highlighted by the choice detail of the unusual: the specificity of light on the trees; the feel of red dust; the precise way a cooking pot resonates in the silence. Food features prominently and exuberantly in the novel, both as a touchstone of culture and a measure of psychological and material well- being.At the same time, there is an elegance and balance in the way Shah acknowledges and explores the differences between the Asian Ugandans and their black counterparts who have often been sidelined economically in the rise of Asian success. The metaphor of Kololo Hill is striking in this regard, acting as a physical barometer of the sociopolitical landscape whereby the black Ugandans historically live at the bottom, near the rubbish tip. In this way, Shah allows the actions and moral compass of Amin to become a dialogue between reader and text, as opposed to a one-sided diatribe.This theme of choice is hugely important to the book, specifically in its exploration of the things that are both within and without our control. Given the circumstance of change, is belonging ultimately a state of mind?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. Some characters cope better than others, underlining both the generational and psychological differences which exist within individuals. Once again, Shah’s observational skills are admirable, with 1970s London skillfully conjured via both the general and specific details as seen through the eyes of the unfamiliar. Particularly striking in this regard is one of the characters’ adaptation to shopping which involves recognising the colours and shapes of brand logos in the absence of being able to read English, and their humorous distaste for the architecture of Arnos Grove. In a particularly beautiful passage, set during a harsh winter, the appearance of snow is likened to watching stars falling from the sky, mirroring both the interior and external world of the characters in a succinct and powerful way. The novel is also masterly in its handling of flashbacks which never feel forced; weaving fluidly through the present narrative and enhancing it with the presence of memory revisited and subsequently changed by experience. Why is it we only appreciate the things we had, the novel asks, when they are gone?This latter section may seem to lack the considerable tension and pace of the first half of the novel, but to criticise it for that would be a mistake. After the gruelling events in Uganda, it is absolutely psychologically correct for the characters to express their cultural and material shock in these moments of quiet reflection, for it is only after reaching a state of relative safety that the legacy of their experience can be measured. The conflict here is quieter but no less urgent, as individuals come to question not only their culpability in past events but their choices going into the future, with the realisation that dire circumstances can sometimes be the precursor to change for the better. It is Asha with whom this resonates most profoundly, as a young Asian woman gradually realising the potency of her own agency removed from the assumptive constraints of what she thought she wanted from life.This is an astonishingly assured debut, written with passion and emotion for its subject matter without resorting to sentimentality or political agenda. It is also an incredibly important novel in both the current and enduring climate of interrogating history through the filter of time in order to examine how we may do better for future generations. For this reason alone, it would be disingenuous to give it less than five stars.My thanks to Netgalley and to the publishers Picador for the ARC in return for an independent review.

Neema Shah's story follows the lives of a family living in Kampala. Newly married Asha and Pran live with his parents, Mortichand and Jaya and his brother, Vijay. December is their house boy and much loved by the family. It's 1972 and they have the unimaginable ordeal of just 90 days to leave their home and all their belongings. Dictator Idi Amin orders the expulsion of Ugandan Asians and the family are torn apart as they flee.I was quickly drawn into this story. The author writes so beautifully that you can feel the baking Kampala sun on you and her descriptions of fabric and food, the colour and texture of the country are stunning.The story is as exciting as it is tragic and I found myself holding my breath as I followed their journey, from the beautiful Ugandan countryside to the dripping wet pavements of London.The author has enlightened me on a period of history I have to admit to being a bit ignorant about, and she has done it in the most enthralling way.

I recall coming through Heathrow Airport in the early 1970's and being surrounded by Asian Ugandans of all ages in various stages of dress and confusion as they negotiated new difficulties after being expelled from their country by the madman who had charge of the country at that time.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.I enjoyed reading this book in as much as it filled the gap in my knowledge of how this affected these victims and how they instantly applied their industry to forging new lives for themselves in a strange country that enjoyed only a temperate climate.It ended a little abruptly for me, after going on overlong in length. It was an uplifting revealtion to me to aspects of my country that we take for granted and without thought- deciduous trees in wintertime, appearing to people for whom such trees are a new experience ina similarly novel climate as 'dead sticks beside the roads' An enjoyable novel

When I was a teenager, our RE teacher was giving us a lesson on life choices and determination, I think, but whatever it was, she happened to mention the Ugandan Asians. We didn’t know what she was talking about. What she then told me, both fascinated and terrified me.Imagine being born in a country, a citizen of that country, but at the same time there is a question mark over you? That ‘Yeah, but where do you actually come from?’ because your name isn’t quite right, or you are a different religion, or because of the colour of your skin. It then only takes the fragile ego of a politician to use those differences to place blame on them for his own failings.This is what happened in 1972 in Uganda. For Idi Amin, it was convenient to blame the Asian community, some of whom had lived in Uganda for many decades, for the inequality that existed in the country. They were the scapegoats.In Kololo Hill, Shar explores that fear of being blamed, she highlights the inequality with the story of December, the House-boy to Jaya and Motichand and also with Grace, maid to a wealthy neighbour.As the country deteriorates into fractious tribal conflicts, it becomes expedient for Amin to expel all Ugandan Asians with only ninety days warning. They must leave everything behind. For Jaya, this means uprooting again, and starting out anew. For her sons, Pran and Vijay, and her daughter-in-law, Asha, it means leaving the country of their birth. They have become the unwanted based entirely of their ancestry.Kololo Hill is a story of identity and the need to feel connected to a place. For some it is the physical connection with a place that make it home, for others, it is the people around them. We all need to feel rooted in our own particular home, and this book brought up many questions for me, just as that RE teacher had done all those years ago. Where and who are ‘home’ for me?When we see politicians and commentators point fingers at others, while hugging flags to show how patriotic they are, then it makes me fearful that Idi Amin’s of this world are back in power.

I thought this book was fantastic. The time in modern history which has been written about here, was a very tragic situation, and one I think we all should be reminded more about. What I really liked about the novel was that all of the characters were very normal people, and you really did feel that you knew them, and that it could absolutely have been completely a true story. All of the characters had flaws (like any normal person), which the author did not try to make excuses for or cover up.An unbelievably sad story of how difficult some people's lives can be through no fault of their own, being displaced, sometimes more than once in their lives, and having to completely start again, with nothing, and also including incredible difficulties. I have the utmost admiration for any people like this, that they even have the courage and fortitude to actually be able to start all over again, and face prejudice etc all over again.I felt that it was also very good that she included the part about December, as I had not been aware of that side of things in Uganda at the time, regarding some of the local ethnicities.One of the main things I would like really like to congratulate the author on, was the fact that she did not succumb to using explicit descriptions of violence and/or sex. It was really refreshing to read a book which had a great story without that.If there was anything that I would have liked more of, it could perhaps have been a little more depth to both the Ugandan and British sides of their life, but then that would have made the book longer, and perhaps, then, made it too long!! I really liked the ending too- it really left you wanting more, wanting to know where their lives went from there on!!