A long, hard look at a novel quickly gaining a reputation for being a modern African classic.
By Akumbu Uche
I tend to approach books numbering over 300 pages with caution but after seeing ‘Kintu’ (2017, Transit Books) the debut novel from Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s debut novel lauded by critics and admirers, with some like Aaron Bady, who writes the introduction to this edition, even calling it the Great Ugandan Novel, I decided to push my trepidation aside and crack it open.
‘Kintu’ (pronounced Chintu) begins with the exploits of Kintu Kidda, an 18th century Ganda statesman, but quickly evolves into the story or stories of several of his descendants in 2004 as they grapple with a curse that has haunted their family for generations.
Reading this novel, one can’t help but compare it to ‘Things Fall Apart,’ Chinua Achebe’s celebrated classic. The relationship between Kintu and his adopted son, Kalema almost duplicates the ill-fated bond between Okonkwo and Ikemefuna. Even the way the book traces Kintu’s lineage mirrors how Achebe moved on from Okonkwo to his grandson, Obi Okonkwo in the sequel, ‘No Longer at Ease.’
But Achebe’s influence is only one of many. Paying close attention, echoes of Elechi Amadi’s ‘The Concubine’ and Ben Okri’s ‘The Famished Road’ cannot be missed. Makumbi, a professor of English and Creative Writing, has studied a lot of early postcolonial Nigerian literature and it shows. But it could be said as well that she is drinking from the same river as these literary icons, after all there are so many cultural similarities between Nigeria and Uganda, and just about any other African country.
A life-long fan of trivia, I couldn’t help taking notes on the Ganda beliefs regarding twins (a shared fascination with Nigerians). There are special titles for parents of twins and children are often renamed after the birth of their younger twin siblings. Identical twin sisters once had to marry the same man and people with hunchbacks were believed to have eaten their twin in the womb. Very interesting. I usually try to avoid reading African novels like anthropological texts but given how much socio-cultural and historical information about us is either yet undocumented, or inaccessibly locked up in Western archives, such resistance is futile.
Reading how cumbersome Kintu finds being married to multiple wives and his frustration at attempting to fulfil his conjugal obligations to each, students of gender performance will find plenty to mull over. The world Kintu Kidda inhabits may be masculinist, but Makumbi is all too aware how men themselves are very often victimized by patriarchy. As she writes,
[Kintu] knew the snare of being a man. Society heaped such expectations on manhood that in a bid to live up to them some men snapped.
All the themes covered in this novel eventually lead to spirituality and its importance to human existence. If you don’t believe in the metaphysical, you will find your assumptions challenged after reading this novel. In the otherworldly realm Makumbi provides glimpses of, there is little room for agnosticism as one character, reluctant to embrace their spiritual calling, finds out a little too late.
From her treatment of the subject, one can deduce that Makumbi holds indigenous African religions in high regard and is tolerant of the more positive contributions Christianity and Islam have made to society – she herself is an alumna of the Islamic University in Uganda, and one of her characters praises her alma mater. Nevertheless, she casts a critical eye on a certain kind of hardline religious fervour, as illustrated by Kanani and his wife, Faisi, (Ganda appropriations of Canaan and Faith) who are members of the Awakened, a Christian sect assured that theirs is the only sanctioned path to Heaven, who among other oddities, evangelise by making up false, horrendous stories about sins they claim to have committed before their salvation yet Makumbi’s pen is never cruel to her characters. Where other writers might caricature, she rounds them and however baffling we may find this zealous couple, we come to empathise with their struggles.
The winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Makumbi’s dexterity with the short narrative form ensures that even the most minor of the multiple characters in this novel are nuanced and true to life.
The section involving Kintu Kidda is the strongest and I found myself wishing she had stayed with his storyline longer. One wonders what might have been had this novel been about him only. A different book for sure, but stronger or weaker for it? I can only hope that Makumbi returns her imagination to the 18th century or even earlier; I salivate at the thought of other fabulous tales she might unearth from that era but before then, I am going to reread this masterpiece of a novel, all 446 pages of it.
Akumbu Uche is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in Bella Naija, Brittle Paper, Engaging Borders Africa, Nowhere Magazine, and Open Letters Review. She lives in Owerri.
