Which all rather ties up with the author's own biography. Asked in an interview if the novel was auto-fiction, Okwonga laughed and replied "I’d say it’s more like a ‘tall tale’ – can we call it that? Obviously there’s parts of this book that haven’t happened, and characters that don’t exist in real life...." Maybe it’s time to admit that for a significant number of people romantic love is no longer the ultimate goal, that Valentine’s Day is a commercial invention that has run its course and that we need to embrace all the opportunities for love in our lives to fully experience what it is to be human. It’s time for an inclusive celebration of love rather than an exclusive one. Time for a rebrand. At the other end of the spectrum are the polyamorists. A group who experience romantic and sexual love with more than one partner. Again, the all-pervasive narrative of romantic love has led us to depict those who practise polyamory in a less than favourable light. They are characterised as being promiscuous, immoral, untrustworthy and dissatisfied. Coming up to the age at which his father died, the narrator is having something of a mid-life crisis, his career rewarding intellectually but not financially, failing to find love, and increasingly finding Berlin is not the refuge from racism he has hoped.

IN THE END, IT WAS ALL ABOUT LOVE. (SIGNED COPIES) IN THE END, IT WAS ALL ABOUT LOVE. (SIGNED COPIES)

Many people will call it that, even those who should know better. It is not a bubble. A bubble is a carefully-sealed world whose occupants are oblivious to everything that happens beyonf: it. Berlin is something different. It is a refuge, an enclave, a safe haven. If Berlin were your bubble then that would mean you were incurious about whatever happened in other parts of the world. But you are acutely aware of those happenings, and that is why you are here. There is a very good chance that you are here because you fled the true bubbles of our societies—the small suburbs and villages where you were raised. where your difference was at best tolerated. There is a very good chance that those places, those bubbles, will resent how you see them now. that they will interpret your distance as elitism and snobbery as opposed to an essential act of self-protection. Those places, those bubbles, will not stop to think about what they did to you, that you were so traumatised that you had to flee at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps when ones survival, social standing and acceptance is predicated on coupling up, the obsession with romantic love is understandable. And it will always have a place in the spectrum of love. But we can experience love in so many different ways that we underestimate, even neglect. We are missing out on so much. Ha-nee reads the book “Love is Nonexistent” and ponders over the claims that it is fake and the implied truth that Dae-o abandoned Ae-jeong and her child. She speaks to her mother and tells her that everyone online is saying the novel is fake and that she knows the woman is based on her. Of course, Ms Song is the orchestrator of all of this. This is one last throw of the dice to stop Ae-jeong and Dae-o from concluding their relationship but it’s obvious it isn’t going to work. Episode 16 is going through the motions. It’s true

H

The narrator arrives in Berlin, a place famed for its hedonism, to find peace and maybe love, only to discover that the problems which have long haunted him have arrived there too, and are more present than ever. As he approaches his fortieth birthday, nearing the age where his father was killed in a brutal revolution, he drifts through this endlessly addictive and sometimes mystical city, through its slow days and bottomless nights, wondering whether he will ever escape the damage left by his father’s death. With the world as a whole more uncertain, as both the far-right and global temperatures rise at frightening speed, he finds himself fighting a fierce inner battle against his turbulent past, for a future free of his fear of failure, of persecution, and of intimacy. A heartfelt and intimate account of what it is to be human, especially right now. Dae-o then hears the news that he’s been exposed online. He’s been made out to be a piece of trash. When Ae-jeong gets into work, she sees her bank book is missing and wonders where Mr Wang is. Dae-o wants the video put down of Ae-jeong at his book concert as he’s worried about her and his daughter. He tells his agent that the rumours are true — he wrote the story without considering Ae-jeong’s feelings. Taking full responsibility In part, writing my book was driven by a desire, born of a decade of research, to get us to re-engage with and celebrate the different types of love in our lives. All forms of love carry the same joys and benefits as romantic love. In some cases, such as with our best friends, the love we have for them can be more emotionally intimate and less stress inducing than any we have with a lover. Demographic data shows that the downgrading of romantic love is, to some extent, already happening. Figures from the Office for National Statistics and Relate show that by 2039, one in seven people in the UK will be living alone and today only one in six people believe in “the one”. Part Three: Your Passport, opens with a tribute to the narrator's well-travelled father, and has him visiting northern Uganda and his father's home village and his grave.

In The End, It Was All About Love | Musa Okwonga | London

And finally you are free; in the end, it was all about love ….your vehicle circles round the yard, draws out of the field and indicates to its right, and then begins the slow descent towards Kampala. There’s something about the third person that I don’t like. I have always found it jarring and there are very few books utilising this writing which I have liked. Musa Okwonga’s In the End it was All About Love has joined that tiny list. what are you? What have you achieved? You are a writer, making work that is far below his potential. Part One: Righteous Migrants - the poem concerns the lingering effect of the winds that blew the slave ships, and the narrative tells of the narrator's time in Berlin. The power of the romantic narrative to drive dating behaviour and commerce is clear but it may also have darker consequences. In 2017 the testimony of 15 women regarding intimate partner violence (IPV) was published. It was clear that one of the issues with IPV was the stories these women had heard about what love was. Love overcomes all obstacles and must be maintained at all costs (even when you’re being abused). Love is about losing control, being swept off your feet, having no say in who you fall for (even if they are violent). Lovers protect each other, fight for each other to the end (even against the authorities who are trying to protect you). It is interesting to contemplate the power of our words. We speak without thinking but the stories we tell our children have consequences.Ae-jeong then finds out that Dae-o was leaving without telling her and she’s heartbroken. Dae-o explains that he wants to tell the world their real story but that it will take time. He doesn’t want everyone pitying Ha-nee and Ae-jeong. She tells Dae-o that he can write the real love story without leaving them. Dae-o is worried about people talking and not leaving them alone — he wants to write in solitude. While she fulfills her dream, he will become a new writer. Ae-jeong shares the news with her mother and cries, explaining how heartbroken she is. This really is the last roll of the dice to keep these two apart in the finale — the K-drama series could not help itself. The ending of the finale The story is also told in the second person, a bugbear I know for many readers, but very effective here. As Okwonga has explained he uses the device to make his story, at least initially, universal: The narrator arrives in Berlin, a place famed for its hedonism, to find peace and maybe love; only to discover that the problems which have long haunted him have arrived there too, and are more present than ever. As he approaches his fortieth birthday, nearing the age where his father was killed in a brutal revolution, he drifts through this endlessly addictive and sometimes mystical city, through its slow days and bottomless nights, wondering whether he will ever escape the damage left by his father’s death. With the world as a whole more uncertain, as both the far-right and global temperatures rise at frightening speed, he finds himself fighting a fierce inner battle against his turbulent past, for a future free of his fear of failure, of persecution, and of intimacy. In the years since, people would often ask you about Uganda, what it was like, and you would never really know what to say. If you had, you would have told them it was the place which taught you the extremes of joy and pain. And now, for better or worse, you are coming home. There is a specific time and date you have been fearing for much of your adult life. When that moment passes, you will be precisely one second older than your father was when he died, and you will have precisely no idea what to do next.