But unlike so many donnish generational novels, Kintu is an entertaining, engrossing, and, crucially, intimate read. It is an epic that doesn’t ignore character for scope. Rather, Kintu is a novel that thrives on its compassionate investigation of the individual within the boundaries of an epic, within the boundaries of a nation’s rapidly changing identity ... Makumbi, a natural storyteller, is skilful at subverting our expectations of characters, and each book is propelled by a teasing sense of mystery. The prose is smoky crisp, and the book’s setting, be it the barren landscape of o Lwera or the bustling market in Nakaseke Town, is vividly conjured. It is also, helpfully, a funny book ... Some sections of the novel are less engaging than others. Sintu’s story, while initially steeped in intrigue through the ghostly sister, never generates the same energy as the other characters. The book’s ending also feels mild. In comparison to the gruelling build-up, certain strands conclude far too squeakily clean. However, these are minor quibbles, and for a debut novelist to be able to tackle a country’s history with such an unflinching and confident gaze is, frankly, astonishing.
... a sweeping portrait of Ugandan history that begins with the fall of a powerful clan in the 18th century and follows the family’s line through the 21st. The novel, like Genesis, is an origin story ... Writing with the assurance and wry omniscience of an easygoing deity, Makumbi watches her protagonists live out invariably provisional answers ... when Kintu’s carnival of clans, royal courts, Kampala apartments and church groups concludes, it is hardly clearer what form “family” might take, or how individuals should reconcile themselves to kinship. There is, nevertheless, a beauty to how Makumbi’s characters improvise alternatives to what they do not have or cannot be.
Like Charles Dickens or Gabriel García Márquez, Makumbi ranges widely across time and social strata; her knowledge of Ugandan culture seems as precise as a historian’s ... With its progression through generations and its cyclical returns to genetic inheritance—hay fever, twins, madness—Kintu’s structure feels epic ... Kintu cannot but be in some sense the story of a people, the Ganda, and a nation, Uganda. But its politics are personal.
The prologue alone of this remarkable debut novel is devastating in its violence ... Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s debut... is a powerful example of the family-saga genre at its best ... 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.
Indeed, [the book's] epic scope and Makumbi’s stated objective of following in Achebe’s footsteps to impart to Ugandans their own often-overlooked history (as Aaron Bady points out in his excellent introduction), make such comparisons unavoidable ... To be sure, Kintu is an ambitious novel, perhaps overly ambitious. Each of its six books would have made an engrossing read on its own, and at times it can feel as if the author is hurrying through a character’s personal CV or scrambling to tie up loose ends before moving on to the next character. But given the equally ambitious themes Makumbi addresses... one may respond that the structure is entirely appropriate ... At any rate, it makes for a page-turner, because just as the reader sinks into the story of one character, her assumptions are upended with the introduction of the next perspective ... Where Makumbi excels as a storyteller is her ability to shroud these family ties in mystery, keeping the reader guessing until the final book ... Kintu is a book not just for Ugandans, but for all of us.
