I spent last year very excited for Neema Shah’s debut novel Kololo Hill to be published, and I’ve just finished reading it feeling as if I didn’t want it to end!

Set against the backdrop of Idi Amin’s Uganda in the 1970’s, Kololo Hill is a beautiful and emotional family saga that recalls the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Asians from Uganda under Amin’s orders, through the story of one family. It’s a history that until recently we have seldom got to read about. Shah charts mother Jaya, sons Vijay and Pran, and Pran’s wife Asha ‘s escape from Uganda where they had a relatively comfortable life which they had built up from scratch, to losing everything and having to start from scratch all over again in England.

The most chest-tightening part of the book is the escape itself, and I thoroughly enjoyed Shah’s descriptions of their resettlement in England; the descriptions were just so vivid. There’s also lots of mention of food throughout the novel. What I particularly liked about the novel is just how strong the female characters are - arguably stronger than the male characters. I can’t wait to see what Shah writes next!