Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s The First Woman is a beautiful tale of a girl – Kirabo – growing up in Uganda in the 1970s.
From the beginning, Kirabo reels you in with her warmth, fondness for storytelling, and curiosity. What follows is a coming-of-age story which deftly weaves in the impact of Amin’s regime, a search for a mother, and an exploration of what it is to be a woman.
I adored this novel – its vivid depictions of rural vs. urban life, its warmth and humour, its political mixed with the personal.
Highly recommended.

I read Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu a while ago with the Read Around the World Bookclub and really liked it. The author is from Uganda but now lives in Manchester but both Kintu and her new novel First Woman are set in Uganda. First Woman is essentially a coming of age story, but it is also way more than that. The story starts in 1975, during Amin’s regime and we follow Kirabou’s journey from teenager into womanhood. Amin’s presence and the violence of those years are woven in the background, but the foreground is all about Kirabou: her longing for her birth mother, her sexual awakening, her place in the world. As with Kintu, Ugandan myth plays a huge part in this novel and I would say that even though you don’t need any knowledge of it to enjoy the novel, reading up about it would give you a deeper understanding. A truly feminist novel with some wonderful women characters and relationships. The book was set for a June release and only after reading it, did I realise that it has been pushed to October, I keep forgetting to check the change in dates due to the pandemic.

‘The First Woman’ by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is the second novel from the award winning author. The novel tells the story of young Kirabo, who is being raised by her grandparents in rural Uganda. Kirabo is surrounded by adoring adults and has plenty of attention but she is lacking is the one thing that she wants most of all – the knowledge of her mother. In order to learn the truth about her mother, Kirabu seeks out the help of a woman considered as a witch and from her she learns the mythology of her people. A mythology that teaches her about the feminist side to the Ugandan stories. At it’s heart, ‘The First Woman’ is a feminist interpretation of these old Ugandan origin tales. An usual and beautiful story. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC and opportunity to read this book.