Thanks to Oneworld and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not usually a huge reader of short stories but this sounded interesting. A collection of Own Voices short stories from the perspective of Ugandan migrants? Yup, sounds great. The glowing praise the author has received piqued my interest too.



The book is split roughly into two parts. The first tells the stories of multi-generational Ugandan migrants living in Britain and the second part tells the stories of those who have made the return to Uganda.

There are some tough issues explored here including domestic abuse, alcoholism, racism, sexual abuse and the lingering impacts of colonialism.

As with all short story collections, some are better than others. I enjoyed the first few stories in particular, but I started to lose interest as I progressed through the book. In particular, the story about the dogs left me completely bamboozled.

There were some really interesting character perspectives but looking at the collection as a whole, it all felt a bit disjointed. Although the stories were distinct, I feel like a short story collection should still feel coherent. This book was absolutely fine (except the dog story) but nothing hugely exciting.

The author is clearly very talented, and I enjoyed her writing style. I think I might prefer to read a novel of hers rather than short stories so I will keep an eye out for any work she produces in future.

I found this, sadly, highly uneven and fairly unimpressive. I adore short story collections but have fallen a bit out of the habit of reading them this year. This collection was not the best choice to try to get back into the groove of reading them. Now, these are not bad stories by any means but for the most part they did not quite work for me. Part of that is down to genre preference; I like my short stories either fabulist or hyper realistic and these were neither, combining endlessly bleak glimpses into difficult lives with stories that just left me scratching my head (there is a story told completely from the perspective of a dog – something that was never going to work for me outside of flash fiction). I found the stories’ endings often abrupt in a way that did not strike me as intentional. The language is straight forward in a way that worked for me sometimes – when this book felt real and like it could be non-fiction – and sometimes not – when the stories felt unfinished.

However, when the stories worked for me, they were absolutely incredible. I adored both “Something Inside So Strong” and “Malik’s Door” a whole lot – if all these stories had been as sharp and poignant as these I would have been in love. These stories were not only cleverly constructed, the characters felt real and interesting, and the emotional heart made me hurt.

This collection of short stories includes the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014 winner, Let's Tell This Story Properly. I loved how all the tales overlap by way of their country settings, and also in other more subtle ways such as shared specific locations and characters. It reminded me of From An-Other Land by Tanushree Ghosh and helped to reinforce the idea of the Ugandan diaspora being connected. Having the British parts of the stories take place in Manchester appealed to me because it makes a refreshing change to literarily explore British cities other than London!



I wasn't so keen on the shory about the two dogs, but otherwise I enjoyed reading Manchester Happened. Makumbi explores different aspects of Ugandan immigration to Britain from the 1950s until the present day. Through these insights into the characters' lives I was able to view British society from the other side of the lens, so to speak, sometimes in a positive way but unfortunately mostly in the negative. Careless comments and attitudes abound. That said, Manchester Happened didn't come across to me as an angry demand for change. In fact its title is taken from an almost-weary comment in one of the stories where a character sums up her experience with the phrase 'Manchester happened'.

This is a collection of short stories from Ugandan writer Jennifer Makumbi about the experiences of (mostly) women emigrating from Africa to live in Manchester, and the struggles that they encounter immersed in a foreign culture. The stories in the second half of the book deal with emigrants returning home to find that they no longer quite fit in Uganda either.

These stories reminded me very much of Junot Diaz, in that Makumbi is adept at immersing the reader in the language and culture of an ethnic enclave living in a foreign city. Like Diaz, she has some recurring characters that she builds a narrative arc for across different stories. The collection is carefully put together and shines quite a different light on the emigrant experience.

A collection of 12 short stories, divided into two sections - one half concentrating on Ugandans’ experiences in Britain, specifically Manchester, and the other on Ugandans returning to Uganda after some years away.  Some characters feature several times, the main one being Poonah - a delightful creation with a subtle, wry take on life - and the stories involving her are my favourites.

The stories are political with a light, unchallenging touch, particularly so where the colonial British legacy in Uganda is concerned.  One entire story, though, ‘My brother, Bwemage’, is concerned with recent Chinese involvement in Uganda, its economic and social ramifications. 

The author writes in a cool, unfaltering style that engaged me straightaway.  She presents her characters’ experiences and dilemmas with insight and delicacy, and the final sentences of many of the stories are especially poignant.  There is a deal of Ugandan vocabulary in the dialogue with no translation into English - I didn’t find it difficult to understand what was meant and I think it often gave a sense of the vibrancy of Ugandan family life - some of the dialogue is priceless.  An entertaining collection that introduced me to a country, the people who left it and those who returned, and a culture that I knew little about.  I’d recommend it highly.