Kintu

'It seethes with energy and teems with memorable characters.' * Sunday Times, Best Books of the Year * Kintu is an important book. It is also a very good one...inventive in scope, masterful in execution, [Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi] does for Ugandan literature what Chinua Achebe did for Nigerian writing. * Guardian * Ugandan literature can boast of an international superstar in Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, whose debut novel Kintu is a multi-generational saga that ties oral myth to a recognisable present. * Economist * A highly ambitious, dense and tightly written narrative Makumbi succeeds in making us feel the emotional importance of uncovering family history. Often faced with agonisingly difficult legacies and situations, her characters dont just want but need explanations. * Times Literary Supplement * Immediately engagingas gruelling vignettes of gender injustice jostle with hallucinatory dream sequences. * Observer * Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's Kintu has been called a Ugandan One Hundred Years of Solitude. * Salman Rushdie, New York Times * Kintu is a triumph of east African literature and one that delights in the pliant nature of storytelling itself, the ways in which family lore is passed down and the impact of variations on it... This rich drama examines the power of such legacies, and the potential for even the most far-flung, estranged families to unite in the face of ages-old evil. * Financial Times * Epic both in intention and execution, Kintu contains a vast number of characters, avenging ghosts and portentous visions...the final coming together of the entire Kintu clan, arrived at with precision and intricacy, makes for a satisfying and thoughtful denouement. * Spectator * 'A Ugandan masterpiece that traces a family curse across the generations.' * TLS, 'Looking back: 2010-2019' * A soaring and sublime epic. One of those great stories that was just waiting to be told. * Marlon James, Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings * Kintu is an entertaining, engrossing, and, crucially, intimate read... an extraordinary novel that is unafraid and beautifully unashamed to examine Ugandas rich culture. It is a novel that is proudly Ugandan; it is a novel that deserves to be widely read. * Irish Times * A family saga that reaches back into that countrys history with an assurance and readability that makes its historical depth feel light as water. * LA Review of Books * A multi-character epic that emphatically lives up to its ambition. * Sunday Times * '[Makumbi writes] with the assurance and wry omniscience of an easygoing deity...' * New York Times * The most important book to come out of Uganda for half a century. * Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland * Magisterialepic... The great Africanstein novel. * New York Review of Books * A great, big, roaring Ugandan epic. * Jackie Kay, Observer * I recommend Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbis Kintu, a sprawling, striking epic...It reminded me of some of my favorite long novels from the past few years, including Marlon Jamess A Brief History of Seven Killings, Eka Kurniawans Beauty Is a Wound, and Annie Proulxs Barkskins. * Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida * With crisp details and precise prose, Makumbi draws us into the dynamic and vast world of Uganda its rich history, its peoples intricate beliefs, and the collective weight of their steadfast customs. * World Literature Today * 'Two books that immediately come to mind, in trying to make sense of Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's ambitious new novel Kintu, are Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart... That said, the overwhelming scale and sweep of Makumbi's effort stands in dramatic contrast with these novels.' -- Randy Boyagoda * New Statesman *

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her first novel, Kintu (Oneworld, 2018), won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her second novel, The First Woman, was awarded the Jhalak Prize for Book of the Year by a Writer of Colour in 2021. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for 'Let's Tell This Story Properly', which features in this collection. She was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2018 to support her writing, and lives in Manchester where she lectures in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.