A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza is a sweeping, multigenerational historical fiction novel that traces the story of a family with roots in India, displaced to Uganda. From Partition to British colonial rule to Idi Amin’s reign of terror, Oza highlights how the forces of history played out in the lives of ordinary people.

Spanning four generations, there’s no focus on a single protagonist, but rather, we witness how the choices that the elder generations make to survive have consequences on the younger. Skipping around in perspective and time, Oza does a fantastic job of keeping the reader oriented. Her prose is so evocative, and I found myself nostalgic in a perfectly complicated way for the months I lived in neighboring Kenya, from the Swahili phrases to the familiar foods to the multiracial history and tensions.

The narrative is propulsive historical fiction for the first half, then shifts to more introspective family drama in the second half. I would have loved to dwell more on the events in Uganda, as I’m not sure if readers unfamiliar with Idi Amin will grasp how singularly despotic he was. However, that’s not the author’s focus here, and instead she does a masterful job exploring how fractured the South Asian Ugandan community becomes after expulsion and how families rebuild after crushing loss. Themes of family secrets, belonging, class, national identity, white colonialism pitting communities of color against one another, and migration permeate the book and give it muscle.

This novel reminds me two other faves, Mai Al-Nakib’s AN UNLASTING HOME for its multigenerational saga crisscrossing national borders and Rachel Heng’s THE GREAT RECLAMATION for how it illuminates the epic history of a young post-colonial nation through the story of its characters.

Thank you @grandcentralpub for the gifted copy! 4.5 stars rounded up.

A multi-generational tale of family and heartbreak spanning multiple continents over more than a century. It is no easy feat to craft a sweeping saga with so many different characters, locations and perspectives, but Oza succeeds here. A debut that will leave you feeling breathless and anxious for Oza’s next work.

The story begins in India and then moves to East Africa. The backdrop of colonialism is present throughout and the history of Indo-Ugandan people was something I knew next to nothing about. Their oppression during British colonial rule does not abate when Uganda gains independence. In August of 1972, the president of Uganda Idi Amin, ordered the Indian minority to leave the country within 90 days. We follow the family in the story as they flee and settle in Toronto, but many also ended up in the UK and India. Oza shows how the South Asian community and Black Ugandans were both victims of white colonialism.

Burning, both literally and figuratively, is a theme that threads its way through the story. We watch the family try to come to terms with a past that continues to haunt them all, one generation after another, and how they are determined to fight for a better future. This book is a testament to survival, hope and home.

Wow, A History of Burning is an epic, ambitious, multi-generational saga. The book spans over the course of (almost) an entire century as well as multiple continents, multiple languages, and several deep and challenging issues like exile, colonialism, racism, and immigration. Perhaps most importantly, it is a story of how one family overcomes all of that trauma; it is the story of their survival.

While I refer to the book as "ambitious", I am happy to say that it exceeds those ambitions. Oza does a beautiful job of weaving the stories of multiple generations together. I have read many historical fiction books, most of which had multiple (often just dual) timelines. I don't think I have ever read a book quite like this. Where we are given a window into every generation of one family (with supporting characters) over the span of nearly a century. Some of the things I loved about how this was executed was that the book mostly went in chronological order. While that may sound like common sense, if you've ever read a multiple-timeline historical fiction book, you know that they typically bounce back and forth between distinctly different time periods. I love that with this book, the reader follows the characters from their childhood through adulthood, sometimes to their death and what comes after. I also loved that I could see how the parents interacted with their children and I could understand their motives and behaviors, specifically because the book provided me with the story of their upbringing. I understood their history and trauma and could see how it played out in later years.

I felt that the characters were very authentic and real. The way the traumas that they experienced caused them to sometimes drift apart, and other times drift closer. The love, the pain, the memories - it all tied so beautifully together.

One of the other things I really appreciate about this book is that I learned about a period of time and an entire part of history that I knew nothing about. I even talked to my husband about it and was able to share this part of history with him (which is extremely rare, because I did not grow up with a love or appreciation of history, whereas he is pretty knowledgeable in that space). The book had me doing more research about this part of history, and I love that I'm walking away from this book not just having enjoyed an incredible story, but also having learned from it.

I only had a few minor struggles with the book and they are not problems with the book, but rather with me as a reader. The first is that I was initially having a lot of trouble keeping all the characters straight and keeping track of the timeline. I'm so used to books that jump all over the place with timelines that it took me a little while to realize that it was progressing chronologically (I'm still not sure that it was 100% chronological because I went into this book blind, not realizing what it was about or that it was going to be a multi-generational book, so I didn't pay as close attention as I should have to the years until I was at least 1/3 of the way through it). So if you struggle with books that contain a large number of characters, I would strongly recommend taking basic notes about characters and years when you start reading. It will help you along the way.

The other struggle I had is that some paragraphs were so chock full of words from other languages that I was conflicted about whether to stop and look up each word or stay immersed in the reading. I did my best to determine what the words were from context, but there were some instances where I had to either skip past the words entirely or stop to look them up. Again, this is not a problem with the book. I actually LOVE that the author included these languages. I think it adds to the authenticity and teaches me even more. I just know that when I'm really sucked into a story, it's hard for me to have to stop and look words up (because I don't want to tear myself away from the reading). So there were some instances where I felt I was missing out a little bit because I wasn't benefitting from a complete understanding of all of the words, but it was never to the point that I couldn't understand what was going on. I just had to decide between my curiosity/desire for knowledge and my desire to keep reading.

For me this book was a slow read, but I also felt that reading it slowly allowed me to best immerse myself in the story and truly appreciate it for everything it was. It's not a book to be rushed through or read in short increments. I enjoyed it most when I could sit down with it for an extended amount of time, without distractions.

This book was written so well with such beautiful prose, that it's shocking to me that this is Janika Oka's debut book. I am thoroughly impressed and look forward to whatever she comes out with next.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A History of Burning tells a story of four generations of a family across a century. This kind of historical fiction is slowly becoming a favorite of mine. It usually manages to make me care deeply about the characters and makes the motivations and dilemmas of characters very understandable. It also serves as a great tool to explain the historical events of the time and the impacts of it on people.
While I was aware of Amin's awful rule, I had little knowledge on the Indian minorities in Uganda and their expulsion. Well, this book remedied that. Staring in 1898 with Pirbhai, a teenager that was taken from India and forced to work in harsh conditions to build the East African Railway, the novel mostly tells the story of his children and great children and how a decision he made for survival impacts them.
The first 60% of the novel was fascinating historical fiction, while the rest of it mused on identity and belonging and the meaning of home, as the family escaped to Canada, topics I love reading about. While I found the ending a bit abrupt, I still absolutely loved this book.
Thank you so much to Grand Central Pub for the ARC and the finished copy of this one!

Janika Oza’s debut novel, A History of Burning, is a nuanced and layered epic that spans a hundred years, four generations and four different countries. It is a generational tale that begins in 1898 with Pirbhai, a 13-year-old from India who crosses the Arabian Sea with a crew of young boys who are promised work. The work is the brutal job of building the East African Railway for the British. This experience shapes his identity and future, and he goes on to settle in Uganda with the drive to make this foreign country a home for he and his family.

The story goes on to describe the lives of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. During the 1970’s, the military dictatorship of Idi Amin forces South Indian residents in Uganda to flee or be killed in an often-overlooked act of genocide and terrorism. Communities and families are broken apart and dispersed throughout England, India, and North America, with Pirbhai’s descendants ending up in each of these places.

Told in alternating character points of view, this story moves through time and place with different family voices lending insights and fullness to the narrative. At its heart, this story is one of family and memory; what can be left behind and what is always with you. The plotline ebbs and flows much like water on the shores or memory in streams of human consciousness. It is a story of starting over and rebuilding, with love and community being the only stable foundation.

Oza’s writing is stirring and descriptive, infused with well-researched historical events. While the length of the novel offers up some scenes and character actions that tend toward banal, it complements the ebb and flow of the overall arch of the story. I am looking forward to more beautiful work from this talented author. Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the chance to read and review an advanced copy.

A powerful saga spanning almost a century and several continents. Pirbhai is lured from his home in Gujarat to work the British railway project in far away Mombasa and so begins an unending quest for home, country, community and belonging. The story is long the characters are multiple and the pacing is slow but stay with it and you will find it well worth the ride. It is a story of human resilience and the will to survive against all odds, the power of new beginnings and the strength of family. An epic tour de force!!
Thank you NetGalley and Grand central publishing for the ARC

ARC from NetGalley
Pub Day: 3/23/23

I like to begin my reviews with a short synopsis of the book’s plot, but that is difficult here. The short version is that this book is about a single family and how they live, grow, and change over a century. But that doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Spanning nearly 100 years and seen through the eyes of 9 different characters the real story is the interpersonal dynamics between these multiple generations of a single family as each individual strives to find a place in their family and the societies they inhabit, where they feel accepted and fully themselves. And it is beautiful. Every character has to deal with the traditional, generational, and gendered expectations of not only their family, but the cultures they live in and the tension between these expectations and their individual desires.

Janika Oza’s writing is superb. Each character, beautifully crafted with all their beauty and flaws on full display for the reader. I yearned for each of them to find what it was they needed, but knew that too often the world, or they themselves would get in the way. This book showed family, not idealized, but as it is with all the love, anger, fervor, compromise, stability, uncertainty, and hope that comes with it. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Wow. What a debut! This is beautifully-written multigenerational novel that taught me so much about a history I didn’t know much about - the Indian-Uganda connection and the British colonialism/post therein. The book opens in 1898 when a poor Indian boy trying to help feed his family is tricked into a lifetime of indentured servitude. Decades and decades pass and within this time families grow and are dislocated and reformed. Choices and the complexity of family are explored within this writing that will make you feel like you’re sitting at a family meal with these characters. The author, Janika Oza, has undertaken a tremendous feat in this beautiful novel and I’m so glad I read it. Pick this one up. This one is brilliant.

This sweeping multigenerational, historical fiction novel about an Indian family settled in Uganda will be perfect for fans of the Homegoing, Pachinko, and other great books of the genre. The writing is beautiful and I learned a lot about a time in history and a people I knew little about before, which is why I continue to pick up books like this. Unfortunately I struggled with the pacing and the many shifts in characters' perspectives so it moved very slowly for me. In some ways it read more like a series of interconnected stories than a continuous novel, which will be perfect for many readers, but just isn't exactly for me.

This is a brilliant, complex, multi-generational story. It's beautifully written and engaging. It begins when Pirbhai, barely a teenager and frantically hunting for work to support his mother and sisters, is tricked into leaving India for Kenya to help build the East African railroad. His story begins the family pattern of abrupt departures as he and his family scatter and reconnect and scatter again throughout their lives as they survive the brutality of the railroad, colonialism, multiple countries becoming independent, Partition, and Idi Amin's regime and the expulsion of Asians from Uganda. They repeatedly build, lose, and rebuild their homes through the novel; while some of the stories are devastating, the novel itself is neither bleak or sugar-coated. The narration passes between family members between 1898 and 1992, and each chapter has the resolution of a well-told short story, even when the events themselves are impossible to resolve. I appreciated that we returned to the same characters at multiple key times in their lives, and I found all the characters interesting, complicated, and distinct from each other.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author, for the free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

The writing is very solid and beautiful and poetic at times. The author is strong and confident in the writing.

This book is structurally a collection of short stories. They are inter-connected but each chapter reads like a short story--with a punchline (that climax or zinger) that is so iconic of short stories.

There is breadth given that each chapter reflects a specific character's viewpoint across time or generation. This does, however, create a certain start-and-stop effect. The writing itself is affecting but only within the limits of a chapter. The depth can only go so far per chapter, per character.

The book is about trauma, serial occurrences of trauma across generations. Yes, it is about survival and reckoning with loss and regret. Moreso, it is about surviving under oppressive systems, i.e., poverty, colonialism, and racism.

I did not like the ending (before the epilogue). It felt abrupt and "convenient." I also did not like the epilogue for being opaque or vague. It was an attempt at hopefulness but missing the mark, it fell flat...that short story "wrap-up" suddenly absent or unachievable.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was incredible. It takes a really special writer to be able to cover almost 100 years, 9 perspectives, and 4 countries, and make it feel cohesive and flowing — but that’s what Janika Oza has done here, and in her DEBUT novel, no less!

It follows Pirbhai, an Indian boy taken from his home to build railroads in Africa for British settlers, and the family he builds. Four generations of the family face down poverty, persecution, and genocide — and time and time again, they rebuild.

It did take me a couple chapters to sink into this story — there are years-long gaps between each character’s sections, which was a little jarring right at the start. But when you catch the rhythm of it, the style is really powerful. I loved how it felt like both one long narrative across decades, but also a series of vignettes, snapshots into this family’s relationships and realities.

In the end, it’s all about the choices we make and how they set the direction of our family’s future — and how those future generations have choices of their own, to either mirror their parents’ priorities and dreams, or fly in the face of tradition and chart a different course. It’s an absolutely gorgeous story about a family protecting, abandoning, loving, directing, understanding (and misunderstanding), and most of all, forgiving one another. Cannot recommend it enough!

Thanks to Janika Oza, Grand Central Publishing, and NetGalley for providing a digital copy in exchange for an honest review. A History of Burning is available May 2!

A generational saga that starts when a poor, hungry Indian boy unknowingly agrees to be an indentured servant in Uganda and spans through Uganda's freedom from colonialism and its expulsion of its Asian population.

"A History of Burning" by Janika Oza is an absolutely brilliant debut! Indeed, it is so well-crafted I have difficulty believing that is is a debut. Spanning multiple generations, four continents, and almost 100 years, this beautiful but heartbreaking novel follows an Indian family yearning for a place to belong in a world that doesn't seem to want them, against a backdrop of historical events about which most Americans know little. I became invested in the characters from the very first page. This book is an achingly intimate portrayal of the hardship real people endured under British colonial rule, the Partition and independence of India, the dictatorship of Idi Amin in Uganda, and resettlement in western nations with antiimmigrant sentiment. This is not a feel-good read; the author does not sugarcoat or shy away from painful topics. This novel does not whitewash history and plainly shows the ugliness, pain, and destruction caused by colonialism and its aftermath. This is not a novel I will soon forget and it is both entertaining and educational. It is not a book that can be read quickly or superficially-there is a lot to unpack and savor in this incredible book. I highly recommend this book to readers who enjoy thought-provoking reads with substance, historical fiction, and generational sagas.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Grand Central Publishing, and author Janika Oza for the privilege of reading an advanced copy of this enthralling book, in exchange for my honest review.

This was one of my favorite books to come out this year. A family saga shaped by abuses of power, economic status, and a socio-political history of colonial and post-colonial Uganda, this novel soars above other recent family sagas in its full realization of characters in each generation.

Oza's way of providing historical context through the lives and experiences of Pirbhai and his descendants was graceful and emotionally resonant. From before the novel's very first burning, the way an imposed separation turns into rigid social stratification becomes painfully clear. Through the characters' experiences, readers are able to see how there are no heroes or villains amongst people struggling to live and grow in a society that was designed on the backs of others. The social criticism interlaced throughout the story was brilliant.

But it is the characters' fullness that truly stands out. Watching each generation grow up, respond to their contemporary reality, and begin again in a new place, readers are able to see how one person is actually so many people over the course of a lifetime.

Though I was comparatively underwhelmed by the ending, wishing for clearer denouement as so many pieces of the story came to a head, I cannot recommend this book enough!

The book was boring to me and it was too long. I usually like books based in Asia/Africa, but this one didn't have much exciting events to keep reading on

Thanks very much to the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC. This was a fantastic, engrossing historical epic that drew me in, especially with the beautiful, effective prose, from the first paragraph. I'll definitely look forward to future novels by this author.

4.5/5: I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and multi-generational family stories and South Asian representation in any form so it's probably no surprise to anyone that I was really intrigued by this book. We follow the story of Pirbhai, a young Indian boy, who gets scammed into traveling to Africa to work on the East African Railway in hopes of securing work to help out his ailing family. Pirbhai struggles to navigate being separated from his family and his culture, being in a foreign country and trying his hardest to survive.

At first, I was surprised by how bluntly the chapters end and how quickly we were jumping through time because in "Pachinko" (a personal favorite book of mine and an apt comparison in my opinion), the audience spent more time progressing along with the family and were able to experience day-to-day life with them. But I soon realized that the main strength of this book was Oza's ability to skillfully control how much she shared of the family's life in each chapter (which is separated by years and locations) and still have the audience understand all the nuances and be able to read between the lines and fully comprehend the depth and complexity of all the characters and their emotions. Instead of learning the daily workings of the family at that stage, you get a snapshot of their current situation - their emotions, the political climate, the family dynamic and such - and I think it makes this book more palatable to people who are easily bored by historical fiction.

Most importantly, this book was such a great introduction to the history of Indo-Ugandans, British colonialism in East Africa, and the political prosecution of Asians under Ugandan President Amin's rule. I was pretty ignorant to it and not only was I moved emotionally by the story itself, but I found myself doing research about the current state of affairs after finishing the book - that's the makings of great novel. I highly recommend picking this up if anything mentioned in this review speaks to you.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who enthusiastically devours multigenerational-spanning historical fiction whenever I get my hands on it, “A History of Burning” instantly proved to be right up my alley. I loved getting to know the family over the years as they navigated and endured an array of shifts and traumas. I also enjoyed the themes of resilience and starting over in a new land far from home that were deeply woven into the story’s fabric (and also admittedly found said themes to be quite heartbreaking at times as well).

Though I’ll be honest, I think what was truly my favorite part was the opportunity that “A History of Burning” gave me to learn a little about the experience of Indian immigrants in East Africa through the book’s cast. It’s a group whose story I had a very weak prior familiarity with, to put it kindly, and am now quite interested in - especially how they appear to have been impacted by the footprints of the British Empire on multiple complex levels not only across several generations, but numerous continents too.

I see this as a must-read for fans of books like Yaa Gyasi’s “Homegoing” or Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko.” And I’ll be more than happy to do my part for said readers to try and get this title on display in the Popular Reads reads section of the academic library that I work at.

Janika Oza grabbed me from the start of this excellent novel about immigration and its effect on families for generations into the future. Pirbhai, a young boy from Gujarat, was tricked into boarding a ship headed for slave-like conditions working on a railroad in Uganda.

Pirbhai, his wife, and his children create a story that is a compelling read. My heart stayed with the family and the grandchildren as history unfolded and struck at their existence. I loved reading each character's inner thoughts and feelings as the story developed. JO clarified that the ordeal Pirbhai experienced impacted all his family members many years into the future. This family's story informs many of us descended from immigrants who fled poverty or prosecution. I can't recommend this exceptional novel enough. It is a must-read book for 2023.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of the book.