Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

If you must write about Africa, then you write about dictators, ethnography, and war; these are the sorts of stories that confirm what people already “know” about Africa. And if you must write about Uganda, then you place a white character in the middle of the action. You write about Africans who have left Africa and migrated to the United States or Europe. You write about the legacies of colonialism. If you can’t make Europe the hero of the story—and these days, you can’t—then you can at least make Europe the villain. One editor rejected the manuscript because Makumbi didn’t want to change it: to publish it, they would have to change it, and the novel is too good to change.