Such a poignant story of family set against a horrific part of recent history.

In the 1970’s Uganda was under the rule of Idi Amin; a brutal, despot leader who is since referred to as the ‘Butcher of Uganda’. He issued an order that all Asian’s living in Uganda had to leave within 90 days. The army attacked, tortured and raped those trying to leave. The government refused for them to be allowed to send or take any of their money or belongings with them. 80000 Asian people were forced to leave everything behind to go to a variety of countries that saw families divided.

Kololo Hill is set during this time and follows a Hindu family trying to protect themselves and stay safe. The book is written from the viewpoints of different family members although I found myself drawn more to newlywed Asha’s dialogue, living with her in laws. She shows a clear head and a strong will that I admired.

The impact of the barbaric treatment is very well written, their fear, disbelief and uncertainty really comes through. I also found the theme of power (use off, lack off and power struggles) really strong.

I did find the family’s personal storyline to be slightly weak and some of the characters not as engaging as others but I was kept reading to understand the wider political and human rights issues raised and how this part of African history under a tyrannical maniac unfolded.

Kololo Hill will be published on 18th Feb 2021, thank you to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this ahead of publication.

Neema's debut book is not one to miss.

What a captivating story the one of this family, Jaya and her sons, Vijay and Pran, and Pran's wife Asha. One of many families affected by the 1972 decree, where all Ugandan Asian must leave the country.
Will they all manage to flee Uganda?

A fascinating and evocative exploration of a family's struggle during Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians from Uganda in 1972. The characters are beautifully realised and their stories bring history to life with poignancy and richness of detail. I'd thoroughly recommend it.

REVIEW: Kololo Hill by Neema Shah @neemashahauthor

“Who would remember them once they’d gone?...How could you disappear from history books you’d never been inside in the first place? And no one had ever bothered to write it down on paper; their history had been told by one person to another, words changed, parts left out, or added. What did it matter now anyway? Their history in Uganda was over. Who would remember this dukan or Papa?”

Kololo Hill tells the story of a family during Idi Amin’s Ugandan Asian expulsion of 1972. A piece of history before reading this book I was shamefully oblivious to, perhaps because I am too young or as the quote above surmises it has been vastly under told within the history books.

The book is told from the perspective of 3 family members, Jaya (mum), Vijay (youngest son born with a disability) and Asha (daughter-in-law recently married) starting in Uganda it follows their journey during the expulsion, in which they are given 90 days to leave everything, to arriving and trying to establish a new life in Britain as a refugee.

I enjoyed the book being told from each perspective as it added to the overall depth of the story, in particular Jaya and Asha being from different generations provided an insightful contrast.

I found the second half of the book to be fascinating and highlighted how confusing, scary and intimidating it must be to arrive in a country vastly different from what you have known, where they speak a language you do not understand, eat food you do not recognise whilst receiving an overwhelming sense of hostility and being unwanted.

Shah’s book was engaging, thought provoking, educational and invoked a strong feeling of empathy towards the characters which I really enjoyed reading.

Thank you to @panmacmillan and @netgalley for this advance copy!

Sadly I am old enough to remember the days of Idi Amin and his atrocities. This book details the story of a family who are forced to leave their country for the UK as a result of his appalling measures. A heart breaking, unforgettable family story spanning thousands of miles. I really felt for the characters in the book. I so wanted them to succeed. A fascinating and incredible story that had me gripped from the first page. Such a horrific time and to find echoes of that today made it all seem horribly close. Powerfully written you could easily imaging yourself in the scenes of the book. The author is to be congratulated on such a phenomenal read. I loved it

What an incredible, fascinating book that explores War in uganda. The women in this book are inspiring and heartfelt, real and raw. I am so grateful to the author to be able to learn more about this aspect of ugandan history.

The expulsion of Asians from Uganda by Idi Amin in the early 1970s is an important story that has been under-told before now. Kololo Hill is a valiant effort to address this gap, and humanising the story in the struggles of a single family works well. Asha in particular is a strong, well-drawn character who rings true on every page.

The plot could perhaps have had a little more variety, and at times I wanted to see more emotion from the characters, who sometimes felt very reserved and proper. But overall this was an enjoyable read.

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.