Kololo Hill

‘[An] incredible debut’ - Stylist 'A novel about home, about belonging and exile; a compelling and complex insight into a recent past that still resonates' - Irish Times Uganda 1972 A devastating decree is issued: all Ugandan Asians must leave the country in ninety days. They must take only what they can carry, give up their money and never return. For Asha and Pran, married a matter of months, it means abandoning the family business that Pran has worked so hard to save. For his mother, Jaya, it means saying goodbye to the house that has been her home for decades. But violence is escalating in Kampala, and people are disappearing. Will they all make it to safety in Britain and will they be given refuge if they do? And all the while, a terrible secret about the expulsion hangs over them, threatening to tear the family apart. From the green hilltops of Kampala, to the terraced houses of London, Neema Shah’s extraordinarily moving debut Kololo Hill explores what it means to leave your home behind, what it takes to start again, and the lengths some will go to protect their loved ones.

'A remarkably accomplished, polished debut.' MALORIE BLACKMAN 'Rightfully tipped for greatness' SUNDAY TIMES 'This moving tale of love and loss ... is well worth the wait' INDEPENDENT ' W hat's distinctive is the modern, multi-ethnic vision of masculinity she presents and the solidarity that emerges from it ... undeniably powerful too.' GUARDIAN ' A sprawling and epic dual narrative ... woven together with gentle urgency; sensitive and with a rare perspective on how our mixed race backgrounds can help form feelings of both internal power and conflict.' I-D MAGAZINE 'You can't exactly stop birds from flying, can you? They go where they will...' 1960s UGANDA. Hasan is struggling to run his family business following the sudden death of his wife. Just as he begins to see a way forward, a new regime seizes power, and a wave of rising prejudice threatens to sweep away everything he has built. Present-day LONDON. Sameer, a young high-flying lawyer, senses an emptiness in what he thought was the life of his dreams. Called back to his family home by an unexpected tragedy, Sameer begins to find the missing pieces of himself not in his future plans, but in a past he never knew. Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2022

How do you behave in a poker game with a genocidal murderer? General Mohammed Siad Barre of Somalia had a revolver lying beside his overflowing ashtray on the baize card table. Dictators bully and cheat, not only at cards. Field Marshal General Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, fleeing his overthrow, abandoned his mansion on Kololo Hill. Amin’s mansion showed us his madness, his vanity, his love of the cartoon characters Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Popeye and Olive Oil, and his hypochondria – the bathroom contained more medicine than a chemist’s shop. On their trips to African summitry, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, worldly yet fanatical, were an enigma. Yasser Arafat and King Hassan of Morocco were diminutive men, but charming in meetings face-to-face. Arafat was full of bonhomie as he tapped the pistol on his belt. Angus Shaw, an award-winning international journalist, was born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. In this brutally honest memoir, he tells of friendship, joy and pain, of lies, of moral decay, and of sex, drink and drugs, as he journeys through seven blood-steeped African wars, culminating in that pinnacle of madness and depravity, the genocide in Rwanda. His story is peopled by cruel dictators and warlords, fighters whose dreams of freedom went unconsummated, great statesmen like the icon of peace Nelson Mandela, the jet-setting Pope John Paul II making pilgrimages to Africa, and idols of movies and music who visited his beleaguered Paradise of Fools. Published by Boundary Books

After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downwards into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years. Then Godwin discovered a shocking family secret that helped explain their loyalty. Africa was his father's sanctuary from another identity, another world. When a Crocodile Eats the Sun is a stirring memoir of the disintegration of a family set against the collapse of a country. But it is also a vivid portrait of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love.

'A tender, unsentimental exploration of the bittersweet joys of lifelong companionship' – Daily Mail Even the longest marriages have their secrets . . . Jack and Bet have been married for seventy years. Happily so, for the most part. Now, all they want is to enjoy the time they have left together in their small flat. But their son Tommy has other ideas: he thinks they should move out and opt for round-the-clock care in a very different kind of home. When a young Romanian woman, Marinela, enters their lives, Bet thinks she might have found a solution to all of their problems; one that could change Marinela’s life for the better. But doing so would mean confronting a long-buried secret Bet has kept hidden from everyone, even Jack, for decades. An irresistibly moving story about love and loss, Sarah Butler's Jack & Bet is at once a story of unlikely friendship and a tender look at a lifelong struggle to find a place to call home. 'Full of beauty, pain and joy, I loved Jack & Bet' – Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us

'A gripping tale of tropical corruption' Spectator 'A genuine imaginative achievement' Daily Telegraph 'As convincing and terrifying a portrait of a capricious tyrant as I have ever read' Evening Standard In an incredible twist of fate, a Scottish doctor on a Ugandan medical mission becomes irreversibly entangled with one of the world's most barbaric figures: Idi Amin. Impressed by Dr. Garrigan's brazen attitude in a moment of crisis, the newly self-appointed Ugandan President Amin hand picks him as his personal physician and closest confidante. Though Garrigan is at first flattered and fascinated by his new position, he soon awakens to Amin's savagery - and his own complicity in it. Horror and betrayal ensue as Garrigan tries to right his wrongs and escape Uganda alive.

Born in Uganda, the Pearl of Africa, Amir Majothi spent his carefree childhood in the town of Kakira. His ultimate superpower was playing mischievous pranks on his unsuspecting victims and much of his time was spent climbing mango trees and dashing through sugarcane fields with his friends. This idyllic childhood came to an end when dictator Idi Amin, President of Uganda, issued an unjust expulsion order giving 80,000 Ugandan Asians only 90 days to leave the country. Missing the deadline meant certain death. Separated from his family, Amir must deal with a corrupt bureaucracy and the ever-present danger of Amin's soldiers in order to escape execution and find a new life overseas.Expelled from Uganda is a captivating memoir, written as narrative fiction. Set in 1972 Uganda, at the peak of Idi Amin's dictatorship, it explores the trials of a young Indian boy leaving behind his home, his faithful dog and his delightful childhood memories, to embark on a perilous journey to safety from Amin's reign of terror.