During the expulsion, all they had was a family secret that could potentially tear the family apart. And all the while, a terrible secret about the expulsion hangs over them, threatening to tear the family apart. I had the privilege of attending the author event which the publisher very kindly invited me to, along with sending a copy of this book. Throughout this ordeal, the reader is kept in the dark about a secret that threatens to upheave the tenuous new life they've created. After studying law at university, Neema built a career in marketing, specialising in TV, digital and brand strategy for companies including the BBC.

This makes it a dramatic and gripping experience because just as we become familiar with the daily life of this family they are uprooted and flung into a new life in England. I don't have a creative writing BA or MA and I didn't start writing my first novel until I was in my late thirties.That was before the expulsion was announced, and Amin’s curfews began, accompanied by an increasingly alarming and violent military presence, mainly directed at those of Asian descent. Through vivid storytelling, it explores the devastating consequences of this expulsion and the challenges of starting anew in a foreign land. it was a bit like Half of a Yellow Sun, where so much happens plotwise, but for some reason the author chooses to focus on the most mundane things. The themes of loss, survival, and the enduring power of family are woven throughout the narrative, creating a compelling and moving story. Reading about African Indians felt comforting for me because of my own family’s migration from India to Kenya to England and it makes me wish I knew my own family’s history better.

Most of the family end up in the UK, housed in an old army barracks, trying to get used to the cold, miserable weather and the sometimes unfriendly locals.Shah brought the novel to its end point with authenticity and a sense of what the future would hold for all concerned. In all honesty, I was pretty ignorant about the history of expulsions of Asian minority from Uganda under the President of Uganda, Idi Amin. If anything, this book made me want to read about Idi Amin’s dictatorship from a Black author or a Black perspective.

Neema Shah’s parents and grandparents left India to make their homes in East Africa and later in London, where Neema was born and lives. How do you learn to navigate new landscapes and languages, building alternative lives to the ones they've always known? My debut novel Kololo Hill was chosen as a 2021 Pick for Foyles, The Daily Mail, The Irish Times and Cosmopolitan.

Neema Shah's "Kololo Hill" is set in 1972 Uganda, through the eyes of newlyweds Asha and Pran and mother Jaya.

Before publication, Kololo Hill won The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Live, came second place in the First Novel Prize and York Festival of Writing Best Opening Chapter, was a finalist in the international Bath Novel Award and was longlisted for the Retreat West Novel Prize, Exeter Novel Prize and SI Leeds Literary Prize. The author has done an amazing job in painting a complete picture, which is painful, gruesome, and heartbreaking, but a real story of the life of Ugandan Asians at that time.

Already living in fear, the family are stunned when Amin makes his declaration, leave the country in 90 days, take only what you can carry, leave your homes, businesses and money behind and don’t come back. But once again I guess it was for the fact that the characters are given their time to greive the loss of the familiarity that they had in Uganda which they don’t in this foreign land. I read We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan two years ago and both books highlighted the racial and economic privileges Asians had over Black Ugandans referring to their subordinates as “boys”, “girls” or even worse.